Dr Bhoe Tewarie, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, is very op­ti­mistic that pro­posed leg­is­la­tion tight­en­ing up the Gov­ern­ment's pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy will go a long way in stamp­ing out cor­rup­tion in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor.He dis­agrees with some of the points raised last Sun­day by pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil Afra Ray­mond.Sen­a­tor Tewarie speaks of hefty fines to be im­posed on those found guilty of steal­ing from the pub­lic purse and he as­sures the leg­is­la­tion is good law.

Q: Sen­a­tor Tewarie I gath­er you are not too pleased with the com­ments made in last Sun­day's Guardian by your erst­while friend Afra Ray­mond, pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC)?

A: (In the Dr Wahid Ali Room of Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day af­ter­noon) No, it's not that. It is just that I want the en­gage­ment to be a fair one. And as a mat­ter of fact what I am look­ing for is a way to get a good bill passed and in pur­suit of that we went through all the chal­lenges and prob­lems we had in the past, out­side of the Par­lia­ment, and this in­clud­ed en­gag­ing the civ­il so­ci­ety.

The Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to pass a good bill but he does not think so...?

The JCC had five is­sues which first of all, they want­ed us to with­draw the bill and we told them, "Lis­ten, this doesn't make sense." We did a lot of work on the bill and we en­gaged them up to the point where they met the leg­isla­tive re­view com­mit­tee and the is­sues were ad­dressed in the bill. (Leaf­ing through the draft bill)

We took all of them in­to con­sid­er­a­tion but the is­sue they are now rais­ing is the gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments even though they have al­ways had an is­sue with that. From their point of view they see this arrange­ment as a source of po­ten­tial cor­rup­tion.

Sen­a­tor, you were in the NAR cab­i­net and you are aware that when the first such arrange­ment took place un­der a PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion the ques­tion of pos­si­ble cor­rup­tion has been around since then?

Yes. They are claim­ing, not with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, that these arrange­ments are prone to cor­rup­tion and that un­der this sys­tem you ba­si­cal­ly leave out the lo­cal pri­vate-sec­tor con­tract­ing com­mu­ni­ty.Now we are con­cerned about both is­sues which is why we are bring­ing the pro­cure­ment bill but giv­en the way in­ter­na­tion­al arrange­ments go, and even the fact that you want to give sov­er­eign gov­ern­ments the right to en­gage oth­er gov­ern­ments and you want to have in­ter­na­tion­al arrange­ments, it is very dif­fi­cult to bring it.

I am pre­pared to ex­plore any rea­son­able pos­si­bil­i­ty be­cause I do not want to cre­ate a bill that is flawed be­fore we get it go­ing.

Even so you are al­so aware Mr Min­is­ter, that these arrange­ments were said to be cor­rupt­ed in the past and what can the Gov­ern­ment do to stamp out such be­hav­iour in the fu­ture?

Well there have been ac­cu­sa­tions about that, yes, and cer­tain­ly the gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments need to be there but trans­par­ent as any­thing else. For in­stance, if gov­ern­ment en­ters in­to such a sys­tem, I think the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go should ba­si­cal­ly present to Par­lia­ment what it means in terms of this en­gage­ment.

How is the lo­cal con­tent to be pro­tect­ed?

We have re­de­fined lo­cal con­tent and have strength­ened it in the claus­es of the bill and sec­ond­ly, we in­tro­duced the con­cept of lo­cal in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment and re­mem­ber you al­ways have to make room for fair in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion.

There have al­ways beendis­agree­ments be­tween gov­ern­ments and the pri­vate sec­tor over gov­ern­ments' pro­cure­ment poli­cies over the years?

Right.

The JCC is not con­fi­dent that we would get the kind of leg­is­la­tion we need at this time?

No. (Leaf­ing through the pro­posed mea­sure again) I think if you look at this bill you would see that this bill is very clear, very fo­cused. When you look at the pur­pose it is clear­ly stat­ed and the one thing they have ob­ject­ed to, as I have said, is the gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment sys­tem.

The time they say giv­en by you for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion–three weeks–is too short?

No. (A slight frown) It is not too short. This thing has been go­ing since 2010, (un­der the PP gov­ern­ment), and as they them­selves have stat­ed, since about 2006 un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion.

How is this leg­is­la­tion dif­fer­ent from what the PNM had draft­ed?

It is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent and it is bet­ter. It is strong, clear­er, on the is­sues that the civ­il so­ci­ety/pri­vate-sec­tor groups want­ed ad­dressed, for in­stance, a de­f­i­n­i­tion of procur­ing agency, the ef­fec­tive in­de­pen­dence of mech­a­nisms of reg­u­la­tion and griev­ance res­o­lu­tion, val­ue for mon­ey linked to per­for­mance and em­bed­ded par­tic­i­pa­tion on the main­te­nance of the in­tegri­ty of the pro­cure­ment sys­tem.

Sen­a­tor Tewarie, (Re­ceiv­ing a text on his cell phone) what sort of guar­an­tee can you give to en­sure that cor­rup­tion does not take place in these con­tracts?

I mean there is no way I can...but, if they can help me to make this bill one that is ac­cept­able to the Par­lia­ment, it is one that I can have the vote of the Par­lia­ment and which can sat­is­fy some of their con­cerns, I would do it in good faith. I re­al­ly do not know what the Op­po­si­tion would do but they were part of the con­sen­sus on the pol­i­cy that helped to in­flu­ence the claus­es in the bill.

I should al­so say that the Op­po­si­tion was not in favour of the in­clu­sion of the gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment. But if there is a change of heart, a change of think­ing, if there is a feel­ing that some­how we can make this bet­ter than it is I am pre­pared to con­sid­er all pos­i­tive ideas.

Mr Min­is­ter, you think that groups like the JCC may have a po­lit­i­cal agen­da or that they are re­al­ly con­cerned about the na­tion­al in­ter­est?

I don't want to im­pute po­lit­i­cal mo­tives to them. I, how­ev­er, sus­pect they are try­ing to serve their in­ter­est, that is the in­ter­est of the con­tract­ing group in Trinidad and To­ba­go and there is noth­ing wrong with that. It is le­git­i­mate to do that. What I have a prob­lem with is how you do it. Once they bring the facts, once they ar­gue their case, once they are will­ing to lis­ten to rea­son, and there is a back and forth, I don't have a prob­lem.

Do you have a prob­lem with how they are do­ing it now?

At this time it is okay but there have been times when they have been less than rea­son­able. There have al­so been times when they were ex­ces­sive, but with­in the last cou­ple of weeks I have not seen any kind of bois­ter­ous or out­landish be­hav­iour.

Sen­a­tor Tewarie, (Tak­ing an­oth­er glance at his texts) how is the av­er­age cit­i­zen af­fect­ed by this leg­is­la­tion...what's in it for him?

The av­er­age cit­i­zen is af­fect­ed in the sense that if you have clear, trans­par­ent gov­ern­ment it means less cor­rup­tion, if no cor­rup­tion at all. And that makes a big dif­fer­ence to the cost of liv­ing, it makes a dif­fer­ence in cost to the tax­pay­er, it makes a dif­fer­ence in the sense of the pop­u­la­tion at large that you live in a de­cent coun­try in which you don't have ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion every day, and so on.It gives peo­ple the com­fort that if some­thing goes wrong in the pro­cure­ment process that jus­tice can be done.

So we are talk­ing now about safe­guards in the leg­is­la­tion?

Yes.

Have the penal­ties been upped?

Yes, (Again re­fer­ring to the bill) the penal­ties are quite sig­nif­i­cant. They in­volve $7 mil­lion, $5 mil­lon, and $2 mil­lion fines, de­pend­ing on the na­ture of the crime and there­fore any­body in­volved in cor­rup­tion, whether in the pub­lic or the pri­vate sec­tor...

(Dr Tewarie, check­ing his watch, hasti­ly in­ter­rupts the in­ter­view for a five-minute break, while hus­tling in­to the House to en­sure the Gov­ern­ment had the re­quired num­ber of votes to have the sit­ting ex­tend­ed be­yond 6.20 pm, re­turn­ing five min­utes lat­er) Yes the fines are very hefty and jail terms.

Are these penal­ties suf­fi­cient to de­ter those so mind­ed to rob the pub­lic purse?

I would think that if peo­ple feel they want to make a jail for cor­rup­tion they would think twice about whether they want to be in­volved in that...in acts of cor­rup­tion.And Clevon, I have to rush off now but I would like to con­clude by say­ing that this is land­mark leg­is­la­tion. It has been long in com­ing.The Gov­ern­ment of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship has re­al­ly, since 2010, tried to take to the Par­lia­ment suf­fi­cient­ly strong leg­is­la­tion and I think we have got­ten it right.