Public Disclosure

by Rick Lowe

One of the things that sticks in my craw is the lack of accountability by the government...or more specifically the politicians...while they pass laws on a consistent basis to make individual Bahamians and citizens conform to their whims and desires.

This upsets me so much that I crafted Lowe's Law which states; Politician's spend their careers making laws to keep everyone else accountable and make the average citizen and business play "fair", yet, they refuse to hold themselves to the same standards.

So I have done a little research and found The Public Disclosure Act (The Act) which was supposedly "designed to make provision for public disclosure of the assets, income and liabilities of persons in public life and for matters incidental thereto or connected therewith".

According to The Act, Parliamentarians, among others, must report their information to the Public Disclosure Commission (Commission) by December 31st, each year.

The Commission is chaired by Mr. H.C. Walkine and is based in the Cabinet Office if I understood the set up correctly in a call with them early last week.

During that same telephone conversation I attempted to get a copy of the latest disclosures by our country's leaders. The very helpful lady, a Mrs. Beckles I believe, referred me to the the Government Publications Office for the latest Official Gazette, that was published November 3, 2004.

So I promptly obtained a copy for $25 only to learn that the latest disclosures that have been published are from December 31, 2000. That's right - almost six years ago. And you're right again - that's two years before the present government (the PLP) was elected.

Feeling somewhat deflated I called for Mr. Walkine to determine if more current data was available. He has not returned the call to date, but if he does I will certainly let you know.

By the way, offences under The Act makes the guilty party liable to a fine "not exceeding ten thousand dollars or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or to both...".

So why should the average citizen comply with the law when the country's leaders don't?

Well if laws cannot or will not be enforced they should be repealed and not kept there for the convenience of politicians when they might like to entrap someone.