To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?Not for the first time Gov­ern­ment has left it to the last minute to bring cru­cial leg­is­la­tion in the Par­lia­ment. It hap­pened on a cou­ple oc­ca­sions with amend­ments to the Bail Bill and most re­cent­ly with the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Bill. To­day it is the fi­nan­cial leg­is­la­tion bills to deal with mon­ey laun­der­ing and the op­er­a­tions of in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial cen­tres. What com­pounds the sit­u­a­tion is the need, ac­cord­ing to the Gov­ern­ment, for sup­port of op­po­si­tion MPs in the Low­er House and in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors in the Up­per House to pass the leg­is­la­tion with the re­quired spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty. A few in­de­pen­dents have not­ed that they feel that a gun has been placed to their heads to vote yes for the leg­is­la­tion or have the blame for fail­ure to pass the leg­is­la­tion heaped on them. In­deed, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al gave as a rea­son for the late­ness of the leg­is­la­tion the con­cern that the Op­po­si­tion would not sup­port the bill. As has been stat­ed, if the leg­is­la­tion is not passed, there can be se­vere sanc­tions im­posed on T&T by the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF).

The FATF is a group made up of the ma­jor economies in the world, economies which have been suf­fer­ing from fi­nan­cial loss­es be­cause of the tax havens that al­low large cor­po­ra­tions and fi­nan­cial­ly pow­er­ful in­di­vid­u­als to pass large sums of mon­ey through the off­shore fi­nan­cial cen­tres. One of the ma­jor con­cerns of the FATF is the need to counter mon­ey laun­der­ing in off­shore and on­shore fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions. Sec­ond­ly, since the 9/11 bomb­ing of the World Trade Cen­ter in New York, there has been a con­cern with es­tab­lish­ing mea­sures to pre­vent those who would fi­nance ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty from be­ing in a po­si­tion to eas­i­ly move the funds around. But notwith­stand­ing the very le­git­i­mate con­cern with pre­vent­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty, the rich and pow­er­ful na­tions have adopt­ed sev­er­al mea­sures over the last ten years to pre­vent large cor­po­ra­tions and wealthy in­di­vid­u­als from en­gag­ing in tax avoid­ance us­ing the tax havens.

That means that the FATF will im­pose heavy sanc­tions against coun­tries which refuse to play ball and adopt the an­ti-fi­nan­cial crimes leg­is­la­tion. There­fore this is not pure­ly lo­cal leg­is­la­tion that can be fooled around with. As in­di­cat­ed by a num­ber of the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, hav­ing the leg­is­la­tion rushed through at the last pos­si­ble mo­ment, to­day, is al­most cer­tain to mean that the leg­is­la­tion will emerge with sev­er­al in­ad­e­qua­cies to it. Pres­sured by the Gov­ern­ment to com­mit to a par­tic­u­lar clause in the bill, one in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor not­ed that it was un­rea­son­able to ex­pect a na­tion­al Par­lia­ment to mere­ly agree on mea­sures which could vi­o­late the best in­ter­ests of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty sim­ply to please the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Now, it may be that the Gov­ern­ment be­lieves that com­ing with con­tro­ver­sial bills at the last mo­ment to shift re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for non-pas­sage to oth­ers may be a strat­e­gy that is work­ing.

How­ev­er, what such an ap­proach does is to pre­vent thor­ough and re­flec­tive de­bate on leg­is­la­tion be­fore pas­sage. It al­so con­tributes fur­ther to the an­tag­o­nis­tic na­ture of the po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment and in the Par­lia­ment. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Gov­ern­ment's ac­tion in de­lay­ing this leg­is­la­tion un­til the last minute does not build trust and a sense that the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment, in­clu­sive of all sides, is work­ing to­geth­er in the na­tion­al in­ter­est. Sure­ly such cru­cial pieces of leg­is­la­tion need to be sub­ject­ed to re­flec­tive de­bate so that the amend­ments rep­re­sent the na­tion­al in­ter­est of T&T. For our young Par­lia­ment to ma­ture, there has to be the in­ten­tion of MPs on all sides to adopt prac­tices which will con­tribute to the process of mat­u­ra­tion. We can no longer blame po­lit­i­cal sys­tems and par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dures for our own im­ma­ture be­hav­iours.