In the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­day, Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment will have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to prove they are se­ri­ous about tack­ling cor­rup­tion.

The main item for de­bate is the Whistle­blow­er Pro­tec­tion Bill, 2022, which in its pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tion failed to get Op­po­si­tion sup­port. On that oc­ca­sion in May 2019 when the leg­is­la­tion was be­fore the Low­er House, re­quir­ing a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage, while all 22 Gov­ern­ment MPs vot­ed in favour, the 16 Op­po­si­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed against the bill.

The stick­ing point was sec­tions of the bill that dealt with anonymi­ty.

In the up­dat­ed ver­sion of the bill, which was re­cent­ly laid in Par­lia­ment by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, the spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty re­quire­ment re­mains in place, so a de­gree of bi­par­ti­san­ship will be need­ed to get this leg­is­la­tion be­yond the usu­al hur­dles.

Weed­ing out cor­rup­tion is the one thing that our leg­is­la­tors, re­gard­less of where they stand po­lit­i­cal­ly, should be able to agree on. It should not be that dif­fi­cult for them to set their dif­fer­ences aside and work to­ward achiev­ing con­sen­sus on this cru­cial is­sue.

Gov­ern­ment, which is yet to de­liv­er ful­ly on its promise to bat­tle white-col­lar crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, views this bill as a key el­e­ment in the ar­se­nal of an­ti-cor­rup­tion mea­sures that it has been try­ing to de­vel­op for the bet­ter part of sev­en years. How­ev­er, they have lit­tle to show as to date the long-promised pro­cure­ment regime is not ful­ly in place and there has not been note­wor­thy progress with oth­er pieces of leg­is­la­tion, such as cam­paign fi­nanc­ing.

The Op­po­si­tion, on the oth­er hand, can­not af­ford to be seen as op­pos­ing for op­pos­ing’s sake on this mea­sure.

All sides should be unan­i­mous on the im­por­tance of pro­tect­ing whistle­blow­ers from job loss, dis­crim­i­na­tion or in­tim­i­da­tion, threats to life, vic­tim­iza­tion, or any oth­er con­se­quences they could suf­fer for re­veal­ing in­for­ma­tion about mis­con­duct and cor­rupt prac­tices.

Any­one who in good faith dis­clos­es se­ri­ous wrong­do­ing or oth­er in­for­ma­tion of pub­lic in­ter­est should be pro­tect­ed and their rev­e­la­tions thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

In coun­tries where such laws to pro­tect whistle­blow­ers ex­ist, their dis­clo­sures have helped save mil­lions in pub­lic funds and have safe­guard­ed the pub­lic good

Whistle­blow­ers have not on­ly ex­posed mis­man­age­ment, cor­rup­tion, il­le­gal­i­ty, and waste­ful spend­ing, but have pre­vent­ed vi­o­la­tions of civ­il, hu­man, and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights

Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al, in its re­lent­less bat­tle against cor­rup­tion, places im­mense im­por­tance on pro­tect­ing whistle­blow­ers from, not­ing that hav­ing such laws in place can “em­bold­en peo­ple to re­port wrong­do­ing and in­crease the like­li­hood that wrong­do­ing is un­cov­ered and pe­nal­ized.”

Laws pro­tect­ing whistle­blow­ers have been around for decades and in many ju­ris­dic­tions, there are now sys­tems in place that ful­ly rec­og­nize the role of whistle­blow­ers in re­duc­ing cor­rup­tion and im­prov­ing in­tegri­ty.

This coun­try is far be­hind many oth­er coun­tries in in­tro­duc­ing whistle­blow­er pro­tec­tion laws. The Unit­ed States has had laws have been in place since 1978, the Unit­ed King­dom has pro­tect­ed work­place whistle­blow­ing since 1999 and Aus­tralia and South Africa have had whistle­blow­er laws since 1993 and 2000, re­spec­tive­ly.

The hope is that our leg­is­la­tors will get it right this time around and pro­duce the ro­bust and com­pre­hen­sive whistle­blow­er law that this coun­try needs.