By Derwayne Wills

A REWORKED Code of Conduct for Government Ministers, Members of Parliament and other public officials was yesterday submitted to Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo by Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman, who chairs a sub-committee tasked with reviewing and strengthening that document.Trotman, once charged as Governance Minister under this Administration, told the media at a ceremony yesterday in the PM’s Shiv Chanderpal Drive office that the document draws from other such instruments employed within the British Commonwealth and Europe.

After coming into office in 2015, the David Granger Administration championed the need for public officials to be held accountable for their conduct while holding state positions. A November 2015 draft of the code posted on the Ministry of the Presidency’s website expressly states that it “does not seek to regulate the conduct of public office holders in their private and personal lives.”

However, that very draft alluded to the code’s application to office holders whose private interests, meaning both personal and financial, could conflict with their public duties and responsibilities, especially as it relates to the receipt of gifts and divulging of state information to their affiliates.

“This is merely a guide,” Attorney-at-Law and sub-committee member Dela Britton told the press corps. “It is not written in stone. And maybe, over time, what may be perceived as impropriety or a conflict of interest might expand or contract; and so the document might have to be revisited from time to time.”

Britton lauded the efforts of the sub-committee, which sought to “cover the gambit of what public life and ministerial duties entail.”

Now that the document has been placed in care of the Prime Minister, he is expected to review it and offer next steps for its actualisation.

For his part, Mr. Nagamootoo said Cabinet had sought advice from interested entities, such as the Guyana Press Association and the Guyana Human Rights Association; but Trotman went on to lament that although there had been advertisements in the daily newspapers seeking submissions from Guyanese at home and abroad, the response was some “twelve persons who responded either electronically or who submitted information to us.”

The Prime Minister, who now holds responsibility for governance, expressed hope for the Code of Conduct to be included within the Integrity Commission Act, thus extending the ambit of that provision, and granting the Integrity Commission powers to ensure the Code is adhered to.

Nagamootoo suggests the document “be sent to the Chief Parliamentary Counsel for legal advice as to whether or not these recommendations for the draft code should now be incorporated as an amendment to the Integrity legislation.”

That fusing of the Code of Conduct with the integrity legislation, Nagamootoo continued, ensures “we are not dealing with separate pieces of legal instruments regulating and/or monitoring the conduct of persons holding public office, but that we have one consolidated law which should be the guide.”

When asked about enforcement of the Code of Conduct in the absence of its incorporation into the Integrity Commission Act, Minister Trotman said: “The President and Prime Minister would be the person (sic) who would have to make those decisions about sanctions.”

He did not, however, speak to the enforceability of the Code of Conduct on Members of Parliament from the Opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP). In July last, Minister Trotman, Speaker of the National Assembly in the previous Parliament, had sought the services of former Parliamentary Chief Whip for the People’s National Congress (PNC), Lance Carberry, to review and report on the state of the Integrity Commission.

When asked about that report, Trotman said it had been submitted since October last, and that the report was in the possession of the Attorney General’s Chambers.

Although responding in the affirmative that he has seen that report, Mr Trotman did not divulge its contents, except to say that there were “very excellent recommendations.”

Trotman noted that governance no longer falls under his purview, and he said that as such, he “won’t go into the details of the Integrity Commission’s review.”

The Prime Minister is calling for patience with the process following the Code of Conduct, in order to ensure it is done with utmost accountability. “It is not so much dealing with timeline and deadline, it is to be able to have something that people, in the end, can say is both enforceable and it has certain provisions by which our leaders in public life can be held accountable,” he said.