North Side Legislator Ezzard Miller
brought a private member’s motion to the Legislative Assembly last week asking
that all the actions of the Central Tenders Committee be done in public.
Mr. Miller believes that such a policy
would improve the transparency of government.
We wholeheartedly agree.
There have been issues with the
Central Tenders Committee for years and years and it’s not just one government
that’s to blame. Elected governments
usually seem to think it’s their given right to interfere with the deliberations
of the CTC, even though news of manipulations usually gets out into the public
either through the auditor general, the press or the Marl Road. Regardless, elected governments still try to
make sure the people or businesses they want to win tender bids get the contracts.
It’s time to stop that funny
business and the only way we see to do it is to adopt policies similar to what
Mr. Miller suggested. Those policies
should start with making all tender bids public after they are opened and then
making CTC meetings open to the public. We imagine that those two steps alone
would probably put an end to most of the governmental manipulation of the CTC
because the decisions of board members would immediately become subject to
public scrutiny.
The argument has been made that if
board meetings of entities like the CTC were made public, it would be
impossible to find people to sit on those boards. First of all, if a person
accepts a board appointment only on the condition that what they do in that
capacity is kept secret, they shouldn’t be sitting on the board in the first
place. Secondly, we refuse to believe that there aren’t Caymanians with enough
integrity and courage to make public, conscience-based decisions in the best
interests of the country.
Governments will always find
excuses to try and keep the status quo, especially when it benefits themselves
or their supporters. If the Cayman
Islands is ever going to rid itself of the deep-rooted scourge of patronage and
cronyism, it needs to let the light shine on such entities as the Central
Tenders Committee.
Related Videos
