Managing Editor
The Nassau Guardian
The following article was published in The Nassau Guardian June 7, 2017 and is posted here with the kind permission of the author.
Focus on transparency should begin with FOIA enactment
After hearing last week’s cringe-worthy budget revelations by Finance Minister Peter Turnquest, it is clear that the new administration’s focus must be on growing our economy, creating jobs and getting our fiscal house in order.
Nothing matters more than jump-starting a near stagnant economy and creating a safer environment for Bahamians, residents and visitors.
But now that the new government is settled in, a focus also should be on making public all those things we have demanded in recent months — the information that we have a legitimate right to — which the Christie administration kept from us.
Before we get to all of that, we need an update on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) passed in February.
It was not enacted.
Likewise, the act passed under the Ingraham administration but not enacted.
We are uncertain about the status of the current act.
But it is an important tool for transparent governance, something the new prime minister has stressed he is committed to.
On April 28, then Minister of Education Jerome Fitzgerald, who had ministerial responsibility for the FOIA, said parts of the act were expected to come into force days later.
We are not aware that happened.
Fitzgerald said, “I have signed off on paper to enact certain parts of the Freedom of Information Act. I think that comes into force this week, if my memory serves me right.
“And that would provide us and allow us the opportunity to appoint the information commissioner who will be responsible for the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act, which is really the first and most crucial part.”
There were widespread calls for the former administration to enact a FOIA to allow the public access to government information and ensure the government is accountable and transparent.
On the same day as Fitzgerald’s statements, a coalition of 22 civil society private industry groups questioned the government’s commitment to freedom of information and urged voters to demand the enactment of the act.
“Unbelievably, yet another election season has come with no enacted or enforced Freedom of Information Act,” the coalition said in a press statement.
The group recognized this as a lack of political will, but also as a lack of commitment to the people’s fundamental right to know on the part of successive administrations and urged the next government to make the enactment of the FOIA a priority.
“...As the current government has had five years to draft, consult, pass and enact a viable FOIA, the prospect of a currently unenacted FOIA until the next government takes power, signifies insincerity and a failure of leadership on their part,” the coalition also said.
We agree wholeheartedly.
The Minnis administration should make the FOIA’s enactment a priority.
In the meantime, it ought to put into the public domain public information.
After railing against the Christie administration over the secret deal it struck with the Chinese last summer to complete Baha Mar, the Minnis administration should move the court to unseal the deal.
Former Attorney General Allyson Maynard-Gibson and former Prime Minister Perry Christie had repeatedly promised to do so, but went into the election failing to fulfill that commitment.
That was not surprising.
The former administration had a well-deserved reputation for claiming what it would do, but failing to do.
Days after the May 10 general election, new Attorney General Carl Bethel said he was awaiting an update on the matter involving the Baha Mar deal.
Bethel said unsealing the documents was “very important” to the Minnis administration, but he had not yet seen the file.
“This is something that we do regard as very important. However, I have to review and then be briefed and we’ll go from there,” he said.
The Christie administration had said the documents were sealed at the request of China EXIM Bank to protect the integrity of the Baha Mar sale deal.
The FNM and many Bahamians felt there was something the then government was seeking to hide. There very well may be nothing controversial in those documents at all.
But that really is not the point.
The point is, we as citizens have a right to know.
We hope the new government does not drag its feet in doing what the last one failed to do. The PLP government was a government of secrets.
So there is much the new administration has to spill the beans on.
There is much it needs to let the public in on.
It is time to start blowing the lid.
Consider, for instance, that the Christie administration never made public the agreement it signed with Cable and Wireless Communications three years ago to get back two percent of the shares in the Bahamas Telecommunications Company.
This is absolutely incredible.
Christie, being the ‘flam’ that he was, repeatedly claimed he would table the agreement, every single time we asked him about it.
One time, he even thanked us for reminding him to do so. Of course, that was a laugh. He was dubbed a ‘jokey’ prime minister, and with good reason.
His team was no better when it came to transparency.
They behaved as if the public treasury was their personal bank account — not in terms of spending money from the treasury on their personal needs and wants, but in terms of failing to disclose in many instances how they were spending the people’s money.
They often acted as if they had no obligation to do so.
They appeared bothered by media demands, and the public’s demands for accounting and answers. This is one reason why they did not deserve, and did not get another shot at governance.
God knows they had to go.
Consider the Rubis matter.
We know the story well.
The Christie administration sat on a report from consultants that revealed that residents and people who work in the Marathon area faced possible health risks due to a Rubis fuel spill at the station on Robinson Road.
Amid the public furor over news of the delayed report, the government expressed regret and Maynard- Gibson announced the appointment of a committee headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Joseph Strachan to examine reasons for the delay and report on how another situation of this nature could be avoided.
No doubt, that appointment was designed to hush the noise over the developing scandal. It achieved that.
Incredibly, but not surprisingly, Maynard-Gibson never made the Strachan report public.
We repeatedly asked her about it; she repeatedly fluffed and ducked.
Perhaps the new government will also let us in on that.
There are so many other such examples.
Nine hundred thousand dollars was spent on the Bahamas Power and Light business plan, but that too was kept secret, although then Deputy Prime Minister Philip Brave Davis, who is now leader of the opposition, repeatedly claimed it will be placed in the public domain.
The Renew Bahamas deal for the New Providence Landfill was never revealed either.
Over the weekend, the Minnis administration released a report from the Pan American Health Organization, dated April 28, which concluded that while the March 5 fire at the landfill that burned for nearly one month was an “acute health risk”, the landfill itself is an “urgent public health hazard” and presents a “chronic health risk” for workers at the site and surrounding communities.
Given the Christie administration’s track record on these matters, it is likely that report, too, would have been suppressed.
Other transparency matters include a lack of accountability on spending on the Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute, and spending on hurricane relief and the Urban Renewal Programme.
The Minnis administration has promised forensic investigations into these areas and audits of government ministries and agencies.
If it follows through, these would likely be most revealing, although they may take a while and be costly.
The new government should continue to take steps to show that, unlike the Christie-led government, it really is serious about being transparent and accountable, even when the information could create negative press for the government itself.
That would be the true test of the new administration’s commitment to such an important pledge.
