Hinds: Opposition prefers darkness

THE failed Whistleblower Bill was designed to protect individuals wishing to expose corruption, but was thwarted by an Opposition that prefers to operate in darkness, alleged Fitzgerald Hinds, Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General. After he had kicked off the continuation of debate on the bill in the House of Representatives on Monday, it was ultimately rejected by the Opposition whose votes were needed for its passage with a special majority.

Hinds said the special majority was needed because the bill would override the rights that individuals had under private contracts.

“This law was to protect people who know things, and so end the scourge of corruption,” Hinds said.

“It was no surprise to me that Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her friends would object to it. They have a record.

“We owe it to the people to ask Parliament to pass legislation to protect you. We hoped the Opposition would support it but they didn’t.”

Hinds said in contrast the PNM had a good record of supporting legislation to better the country when brought by past attorney general Ramesh Maharaj.

He surmised that citizens now would not trust the Opposition’s integrity and potential for good governance.

“We brought this bill to Parliament in 2015. It languished in a JSC (joint select committee) until recently. The Opposition wanted to send it back to the JSC again.

“Sending things to JSC is one way the UNC uses to avoid the tide of good clean legislation to attack white collar crime in this country.”

Accusing the Opposition of not supporting law and order measures, he alleged that they preferred to operate in darkness not light.

“We try to encourage citizens to become whistleblowers but the Opposition doesn’t want that.” Hinds accused the Opposition of improperly dealing with legislation in Parliament based on how it would affect them personally, an allegedly ad hominem approach.

Hinds justified the inclusion of private firms under the bill, explaining, “Private sector elements are often involved in corruption involving public money. The idea of the bill was to protect people from victimisation.”

While Opposition MP for Mayaro Rushton Paray in a Facebook post yesterday suggested the bill was overly cumbersome in setting up a Stalinist-style state-controlled network of units to take whistleblower reports of corruption, Hinds rejected that argument.

“I don’t consider the bill is cumbersome, but it’s pretty straightforward,” Hinds said. “It is to protect people who want to give information to the state, so as to identify and prosecute corruption. It’s straightforward. It has very elaborate provisions for how this is to be effected.”

Hinds said the bill proposed two approaches to getting details from whistleblowers. “We had whistleblower units, including the police service, Office of DPP and Auditor General – 21 of them – plus provision was made for every organisation in the private sector to appoint a person, who would administratively manage the receipt of information and then pass it over to the units, the 21 units as established in the schedule.”

He said the Government had responded to queries about costs.

Just as for the OSHA law, Hinds said, you appoint someone to take whistleblowing complaints in any company based on his/her good reputation. “It didn’t require any special training or cost.” Hinds said the Government had assured the bill would not harm ordinary people, because false and malicious reports would be punished.