Opposition senator warns NaRRA Bill weakens oversight as Melissa rebuild trust is tested

KINGSTON, Jamaica — On Friday in the Senate, Opposition Senator Cleveland Tomlinson said the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA) Bill falls short on supervision and answerability, and linked that gap to what he described as a “trust deficit,” as senators continued their debate on the measure.

NaRRA is the agency the Government set up to steer recovery after Hurricane Melissa, which the article estimates caused about US$12.2 billion in losses.

“The deficiencies in this Bill should be taken in the context of the level of the trust the Government is asking of the people,” said Tomlinson.

“When a Government asks its citizens to accept a statutory body with vast powers, a single unaccountable executive, no governing board, no audit committee, no mandatory parliamentary oversight of its directions and decisions, when it asks for that level of trust, the threshold question is: has this Government demonstrated, through its conduct in office, the kind of probity and respect for institutional boundaries and constitutional norms that would justify giving any administration this kind of unrestrained executive authority over billions of public dollars?” he added.

According to Tomlinson, “The record speaks for itself. This is a Government that has faced repeated adverse findings in our courts on constitutional grounds. This is a Government whose record of respect for constitutional constraints has been tested and found wanting, not by the Opposition, but by the judiciary.”

Continuing, Tomlinson said, “When the courts of this land have had occasion to examine whether this administration has remained within its constitutional boundaries, the rulings have not been flattering. That is a matter of public record, and it is directly relevant to whether this Senate should be comfortable passing legislation that concentrates this much un-reviewed executive power in this administration’s hands.”

Tomlinson, still speaking for the Opposition bench, said the discussion should not stop at rulings on the Constitution; the country also had to face how public money is usually handled.

He noted that, “NaRRA will sit outside the normal budgetary appropriation process, or at least, the Bill does not confirm that it sits within it. Its CEO (chief executive officer) can sign procurement contracts of unlimited value without a co-signatory. Its minister can direct it operationally in writing but those directions need not be gazetted, need not be reported to Parliament, need not be made public in any form.”

Tomlinson said that, “In a country where procurement irregularities have been a persistent feature of public life, where major infrastructure projects have been plagued by cost overruns and questionable contractor selections, the Government is asking us to create a procurement and project delivery vehicle with less oversight than the bodies that already exist. That is extraordinary.”

He stressed that, “This is not an argument that the Government is planning to steal. It is an argument that good governance does not depend on the personal integrity of those who happen to hold power at any given moment. Good governance depends on systems, on structures, on checks and balances that work regardless of who is in office.”

He added, “The tragedy of this Bill is not that it creates NaRRA; it is that it creates NaRRA without the institutional architecture that would make it trustworthy under any Government.”