Governance Under Threat: The Impact of Corruption and the Fight Against Corruption

• Author: Trevor Munroe
• Pages: 369-382

Governance Under Threat 369

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the theme of our 2002 Mona Academic Conference is “The Governance

Challenge: National, Regional and Global Dimensions”. In addressing this

theme, it is of some considerable importance to do so in the context of the

people’s views as to what constitutes this challenge, and more specifically, what

are their opinions on the issue of corruption and governance, the particular

subject of my paper.

Ten years ago, writing with the benefit of extensive meetings up and down

the region and in the Caribbean diaspora, the authors of the West Indian

Commission Report spoke of popular “disaffection with governance”. The armed

assault and hostage-taking in the Trinidad Parliament in July 1990, in their

opinion, carried “confirmation of the dangers that could lie ahead” and reflected

one extreme manifestation of “much complaint to the Commission of decline

in standards of governance”. The Commissioners, in their 1992 report,

recommended, among other things, that a Caricom Charter of Civil Society be

drawn up enshrining standards and principles of governance to which the

social partners in the region could hold one another and be held to account.

According to the 1992 Report of the West Indian Commission (p.508) this Charter

should deal with such specific matters as a free press, a fair and open democratic

process, the effective functioning of the parliamentary system . . . respect for

the rights of women and children, the right of association and freedom from

political victimisation . . . greater accountability and transparency in

governance and greater public access to information.

Amongst “the specific matters” with which the Charter should deal was “the

absence of corruption in public life”.

The charter eventually adopted by the heads of government five years later

in 1997 included all the matters recommended but, regrettably, excluded any

GovernanCe under threat: the

iMPaCt of CorruPtion and the

fiGht aGainSt CorruPtion

TREVOR MUNROE

CHAPTER NINETEEN