By Hilbert Haar
Part 1 of the history leading up to the establishment of the Integrity Chamber on St. Maarten. Log in here on StMaartenNews.com to read this full review or become a patreon on https://www.patreon.com/posts/29984975 and be the first to get updates on the next parts in the 3-parts series of this StMaartenNews.com publication about the Integrity Chamber.
PHILIPSURG – The term integrity became a hot button issue in St. Maarten after the Kingdom Council of Ministers, on September 30, 2013, ordered Governor Drs. Eugène Holiday to conduct an investigation into the government’s integrity. That inquiry was performed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The government hit back: it established a committee headed by Constitutional Court chairman Bob Wit to perform an inquiry of its own. Transparency International joined the party and conducted a so-called National Integrity System Assessment.
The findings from these three reports confirmed what many people thought: St. Maarten’s government and local politicians are no strangers to bending the rules to their advantage. And while politicians dismissed all these reports as “hearsay” the government accepted the conclusions and promised to abide by most of their recommendations.
One of those recommendations – from the Bob Wit Committee – was to establish an Integrity Chamber. This is the text of Wit’s recommendation 12.1: “Establish an independent Integrity Chamber as a new High Council of State that could include among others the current Corporate Governance Council and the Integrity Bureau. Give this Integrity Chamber a sturdy legal basis, also in the constitution. Recruit and select the members of this Chamber in a transparent way, using the procedure that is for instance also used for the appointment of members of the Electoral Council.”
Wit’s report was published in June 2014. Now, more than five years later, former Justice Minister Rafael Boasman has been appointed as St. Maarten’s quartermaster for the establishment of the Integrity Chamber. Hans Lodder is the quartermaster on behalf of the Netherlands.
Various politicians have expressed their doubts about the need for the Integrity Chamber over the years with the argument that “all checks and balances are already in place” but in the end the government – and the parliament – accepted the situation and supported the establishment of the national ordinance Integrity Chamber. Parliament approved the law on December 18, 2017 and the law came into force by national decree on November 15, 2018.
While the three integrity reports made clear that there is a lot of room for improvement in the integrity-department, there is yet another report that supports this notion. In 2014, the year the two of the three integrity-reports were published (the third one followed in 2015), the General Audit Chamber published its Baseline Study St. Maarten about “the state of affairs of institutional integrity management.” Its main conclusion is clear: “Few, if any formal regulations in the area of integrity are being implemented,” and: “Half of the persons surveyed were not familiar with the code of conduct for civil servants.”
So here we are: St. Maarten will have a functioning Integrity Chamber. Arguments have been made to integrate the task of the Integrity Chamber into the General Audit Chamber. While this seemed a viable option, it did not become a reality, because the Netherlands demanded the establishment of an independent body.
The Audit Chamber performs performance, compliance and integrity audits, but the task of the Integrity Chamber goes deeper. Apparently, the two are not compatible in this sense.
There are still many misconceptions about the powers of the Integrity Chamber. One of them is that it has more power to investigate integrity cases than the Prosecutor’s Office. This is incorrect. The Integrity Chamber and the Prosecutor’s Office are supposed to make mutual agreements about cooperation and the exchange of information. These agreements must be published in the National Gazette within half of year after the national ordinance Integrity Chamber came into force. So far, that publication is still a work in progress because it has not reached the columns of the Gazette yet.
There is however a general understanding that criminal investigations belong with the Prosecutor’s Office and that the Integrity Chamber has to stay away from them.
Then what is exactly the task of the Integrity Chamber? It is tasked with “advising about policy for the general promotion of integrity of the country” and “conducting preliminary investigations and investigations into suspicions of abuse (the Dutch term is ‘misstand’) within administrative bodies of the country.” Government-owned companies also fall under the Chamber’s investigative authority.
The organization of the Integrity Chamber consists of three components: the Chamber, a secretariat and a supervisory board.
The Netherlands and St. Maarten each appoint a member to the Integrity Chamber. These two appointees appoint a joint chairman – who is not necessarily from St. Maarten. The same procedure applies to appointments for the supervisory board.
The authority to conduct searches is another oft misunderstood authority. Indeed, for its investigations the Integrity Camber is authorized “access to every place, with the exception of a house without permission of the resident.” All these actions require written permission from the supervisory board.
There is another safeguard against overenthusiastic searches: the prime minister can forbid the Integrity Chamber access to certain places if such entrance would put national security at risk.
Given the composition of the Integrity Chamber and its supervisory board, but also considering the independent position of this institution, St. Maarten’s government is not in control; the Netherlands is not in control either.
Another concern – a favorite of local politicians – is “who will screen the screeners.” It sounds interesting but it does not mean anything. The screening process is not a random procedure, but if, as the Wit Committee has suggested, recruitment and selection of candidates follows the procedure that is in place for the appointment of members of the Electoral Council, candidates need to get the nod of approval from three institutions: the Council of Advice, the General Audit Chamber and the Joint Court of Justice.
One thing is for sure: there is absolutely no role for Parliament in the appointment of these candidates.
And then there is this question: what, exactly, is integrity? This is the definition used by anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International: “Behaviors and actions consistent with a set of moral or ethical principles embraced by individuals as well as institutions that create a barrier to corruption.”
Here is a shorter and easier to understand version: “Doing the right thing while nobody is watching.”
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Related articles:
Integrity Chamber: a work in progress – Part 2
Slowly but surely the Integrity Chamber is taking shape – Part 3
