Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) chair Don­na Jack-Hill has ap­pealed to par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to sup­port whistle­blow­er leg­is­la­tion.

“We need to im­ple­ment mech­a­nisms aimed at pro­tect­ing wit­ness­es and vic­tims of cor­rup­tion,” she said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Mon­day to dis­cuss T&T’s stag­nant po­si­tion on the 2023 Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tions In­dex (CPI).

T&T scored 42 in 2023 and 2022, one up from the 2021 score of 41 and is ranked 76th out of 180 coun­tries.

“We would all like to be at the top of our re­gion scor­ing 100 be­ing the clean­est coun­try in the world,” Jack-Hill said.

“Con­sid­er­ing 50 as the pass­grade out of 100 we need to do much bet­ter.”

The Whistle­blow­er Pro­tec­tion Bill, 2022 was in­tro­duced in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds on Jan­u­ary 14, 2022, but Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and vi­o­lat­ed the rule of law.

Jack-Hill al­so called for cam­paign fi­nance leg­is­la­tion to be im­ple­ment­ed ahead of the up­com­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“At present, Trinidad and To­ba­go does not have a re­al or prop­er reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tem in place for the ac­qui­si­tion or ex­pen­di­ture of fi­nan­cial re­sources re­quired by po­lit­i­cal par­ties to con­test the elec­tions,” she said.

She said in­roads need to be made at the pol­i­cy and op­er­a­tional lev­els for T&T to be suc­cess­ful in the fight against cor­rup­tion and the pub­lic needs to ad­vo­cate for the clos­ing of all the leg­isla­tive gaps.

“Even more im­por­tant, I think is once we get the leg­is­la­tion in place, it is op­er­a­tional­is­ing and util­is­ing it and it hav­ing some kind of ef­fi­ca­cy in get­ting us the in­for­ma­tion we need to pur­sue cor­rupt ac­tions in the so­ci­ety,” Jack-Hill added.

She al­so called for a pub­lic move­ment against cor­rup­tion.

In the Caribbean, the scores re­mained the same and Jack-Hill said it il­lus­trates that coun­tries in the re­gion made lit­tle to no progress.

“Bar­ba­dos was able to im­prove by four points ... all of the oth­er coun­tries have ei­ther re­mained the same or moved up one point and in the case of Venezuela down one point,” she said.

Jack-Hill said many of the rec­om­men­da­tions in the re­port cen­tred around the ur­gent need to build a more ro­bust and in­de­pen­dent ju­di­cia­ry.

“Where ap­point­ments and dis­missals are trans­par­ent and based on ex­pe­ri­ence and per­for­mance, hon­est judges and pros­e­cu­tors have the guar­an­tee to con­duct their work with­out in­ter­fer­ence,” she said.