Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter
JAMAICANS DO not feel that either the governing People's National Party (PNP) or the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) can do a good job of fighting corruption.
Forty one per cent of 1,008 persons surveyed in a recent Gleaner-commissioned poll said that they did not know if either of the two major political parties could do a good job preventing corruption in government.
But after 16 years in government and despite several scandals, more members of the public still trust the PNP to tackle corruption than the JLP. Also, asked who would do better at preventing corruption in the private sector, the PNP again scored higher, with 30 per cent, against the JLP's 27 per cent. 'Don't know' scored the highest with 43 per cent.
The poll was conducted by pollster Bill Johnson and his team of researchers on March 4 and 5 in 84 communities across the island's 14 parishes. The margin of error is plus or minus three per cent.
Minister of Information and PNP General Secretary, Senator Burchell Whiteman, reacted cautiously to the poll findings.
"Forty one per cent of them are really saying a plague on both houses, that we are not equipped to deal with it which is not a comfortable situation," he said.
Ken Jones, secretary of the Farquharson Institute of Public Affairs, said he was surprised at the result, given that the JLP had been out of government since 1989. Corruption, he said, was higher now than under the 1980-89 JLP Government.
"Corruption in the private sector or perceived corruption is so high that it is on everyone's lips, it is almost taken for granted," he said.
Said Audley Shaw, the JLP's Spokesman on Finance: "The situation under this Government is bordering between corruption and sheer madness and is absolutely intolerably."
Mr. Shaw pointed to the recently-released 18th Annual Report of the Contractor-General, which covered the period January 2004 to December 2004. According to the report, most government contracts had significant cost and time overruns.
However, according to Transparency International's (TI) Corruption Perception Index, Jamaica has improved relative to other countries. Jamaica was ranked 74 out of 146 countries, but improved to 64 in 2005 in a field that contained 12 more countries.
But Beth Aub, former general secretary of TI Jamaica, said there remains much work to be done by the current Government to increase transparency.
"What we have always said is that the countries which have the greatest transparency have the least corruption," she emphasised.
