Georgetown : The reworked draft of the Code of Conduct for Ministers, Members of Parliament and Public Office holders is to be sent to the Chief Parliamentary Counsel for legal advice as to whether the draft code should now be incorporated as an amendment to the Integrity Commission Acts.
This is according to Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, who received the reworked code, yesterday. The document was handed over the PM, by the members of the sub- committee, established to review it, this afternoon at a simple ceremony, at his office at Shiv Chanderpaul Drive.
Prime Minister Nagamootoo explained that the document, as an amendment to the Integrity Commission Acts, will ensure that, government is not dealing with separate pieces of legal instruments, regulating or monitoring the conduct of persons holding public office. The move, he explained will allow for “one consolidated law, that should be the guide and should be enforced, in so far as infraction of the law is concerned or any inadequacy to meet up to the requirement of the legislation.”
Government in setting out to rework the code of conduct, had done so with the view “that there is a great need for, and emphasis on the code of conduct for persons in public life,” the PM said.
Since the Integrity Commission Acts provides for declaration of assets and for justification of assets in the name of persons who hold office and their spouses and children of a specified age, Government also sought to broaden the integrity legislation to include the prescriptions that are in fact prescription for a code of conduct within the integrity legislation, the PM said.
Prime Minister Nagamootoo explained that the government had examined the draft code at the Cabinet level and had circulated it to interested parties including the Guyana Press Association and the Guyana Human Rights Association. He explained that initially government had only received two responses with recommendations. “It is because we felt that the subject matter is of critical importance to public life, good governance and accountability, that we decided to have a special committee set up by Minister Trotman to have the matter reopened for submissions and recommendations,” the Prime Minister explained.
He added that Government even approached the Secretariat of the Integrity Office for assistance in the process. He noted that the process was advertised, and “we were hoping that we would receive submissions from Guyanese living at home and abroad and that we would have benefitted from the modules and precedents of other countries.”
In May of 2016, PM appointed a sub-committee to review and strengthen the draft code of conduct. The PM requested Minister Trotman to chair the sub-committee because of his experience with the initial framework of the Code. Minister Trotman accepted the task.
Minister Trotman told the media today, that the sub-committee met on five occasions. The subcommittee had its initial meeting on April 1, 2016 and the final meeting on May 13, 2016
The Minister said that the team approached the work with great interest. “…we went through the world and places such as Tasmania and different parts of the African continent, Europe and the Caribbean were looked at as sources of precedents to see how issues were dealt with, and which would be applicable here in Guyana,” he said.
Attorney-at-law and Committee member Dela Britton said that the committee toiled under the guidance of the minister. “This is merely a guide, it is not written in stone,” she said, adding that “maybe in time what may be perceived as propriety or conflict of interest might expand or contract and so the document might have to be revisited from time to time.”
Nevertheless the Attorney-at-law expressed the view that the document covers, “the ambit of what public life and ministerial life entails.”
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