Imbert: I don't know how to take a bribe

Corruption is not just public officials asking for bribes, Finance Minister Colm Imbert said on Wednesday at a virtual panel discussion, but private-sector entities offering bribes.

It’s been a challenge then, he said, and it’s taken nearly 30 years – spanning his career in public life – to explain to some people in the private sector that “maybe some of the other parties might do things in a particular way where bribery might be the norm and that’s how you get things done, but we don’t do that. We try to make things as open as transparent as fair as possible.”

The theme of the discussion, hosted by the Andean Development Bank, known as CAF, was corruption and transparency in the region.

Imbert noted one of the surveys done by CAF asked about people being solicited for bribes by public officials. Twenty-three per cent responded affirmatively, but if the question was flipped to ask how many offered bribes, he wondered if people would still be willing to respond.

“They (the private sector) do so because they think they will succeed.

"Let me go back to how long I’ve been in this business. I’ve gone into government seven times and been thrown out into Opposition three times.

"Each time we were sent into Opposition it was because we were deemed to be incompetent or else not up to the task; we weren’t deemed to be corrupt. The seven times that we got into government, it’s because the other party was deemed to be corrupt. So quite often we have gone in because we are viewed as less corrupt than the other government.”

There shouldn’t be a need to incentivise the private sector, he said, but rather, it should be made to understand that there is a level playing field with fair opportunity to ensure the country is getting value for money.

“My experience has been, more often than not, that the private sector is quite happy to offer inducement to public officials to get preferential treatment and to get an inside track or unfair advantage.

"In my own public life, over 29 years, one of the problems I face all the time when people approach me is I say, ‘Please go away, get lost. Don’t come by me with that nonsense at all.’ In fact, I remember many years ago I was accused of being too stupid to be corrupt, that I didn’t know how to take a bribe. Not a joke.

"So the private sector has its part to play. It’s not just that we need to incentivise integrity, they need to understand that that’s the only way to do things.”

He recalled the election season from 1999-2000, when the government at the time was deemed by the public to be guilty of corruption.

“The campaign on the other side was, ‘What do you want? A crook who gets things done or a mook who can’t do anything.’” (A mook, he explained to his non-TT audience, is a useless person). “And that actually resonated with some sectors of the population at the time.”

Fortunately, he said, the country has progressed from a time when it was felt a government would remain in office even if it was corrupt, so long as it performed and delivered goods and services.

For this most recent election, however, he noted that the PNM promised digital transformation – although he joked it was still trying to determine if it;s digitisation or digitalisation – within two years in the public service. Among the features available to the public that will  aid transparency would be information on the awards of contracts, contractors and the tendering process; Freedom of Information Act applications; whistleblower platforms that he expected would also ensure protection via encryption; and e-procurement “for people to see with their own eyes what’s happening.”