3 rd AUBREY PHILLIPS LECTURE 2015, MONEAGUE, St ANN INTEGRITY: THE - PDF document

3 rd AUBREY PHILLIPS LECTURE 2015, MONEAGUE, St ANN “INTEGRITY: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO JUDGEMENT, DEPTH OF CHARACTER AND QUALITY LEADERSHIP” NOVEMBER 11, 2015 PRESENTATION BY PROFESSOR TREVOR MUNROE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INTEGRITY ACTION ( PLEASE CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY) Salutations May I thank you for inviting me to be your guest speaker at this, the 3rd Aubrey Phillips Lecture 2015 and allow me to congratulate you for choosing as your central theme “ INTEGRITY: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO JUDGEMENT, DEPTH OF CHARACTER AND QUALITY LEADERSHIP ” as I believe ‘integrity’ was a guiding principle of the man whom this lecture memorialises. I do not recall having met him personally, though his career and mine overlapped at the UWI, but from what I have gathered, mainly from his son, Peter, his was a life of integrity, that is, of honesty, probity, uprightness, of high moral standards – which is what the word integrity connotes. These were featu res of Aubrey Phillips’ career and work, during the time he spent at Mico ( sharing rooms, I understand, with his older class-mate, former Governor General , Sir Howard Cooke ), to the time in the 1940’s when he did his external degree at the University of London ; to the time when he completed his doctorate at the University of London , interestingly, when he was well into his 40s; to the time when he became Professor of Education at the University of the West Indies. This characteristic of integrity, good judgement and quality leadership is, as you Page 1 of 12 (PLEASE CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY)

would appreciate far better than me, this is what he brought with him as the first Principal of Moneague College in 1956 and, later on, as one of the earliest Presidents of the Jamaican Teacher’s Association in 1964. So you could hardly have chosen a better theme than ‘integrity’ , given the character of the man Dr. Aubrey Phillips. But there is an additional reason why this theme of integrity is so timely. It is timely because so many are now acknowledging that integrity, honesty, probity and a strong moral ethic has to be a fundamental guiding principle if we are to pull ourselves, in Jamaica and elsewhere, out of the crises that are making life so very difficult for so many. It is therefore no accident that integrity is at the heart, indeed at the centre of the mission of National Integrity Action because we understood when we were established in 2011 that you can’t combat corruption unless, at the same time, you are building integrity. Similarly, ten years before we were formed, the Government of Jamaica in 2002, enunciated the principle of “integrity” as one of the standards of public life which should govern the activities of Ministers. And this is not just a principle acknowledged by the public sector but as well, by the best in our private sector. In fact, one of our most successful Jamaican businesses, Grace Kennedy, promotes integrity as one of its guiding principles and even as we speak here today, the Parliament has before it and is now deliberating a bill entitled “ The Integrity Commission Act ” which acknowledges that “integrity… is the standard that safeguards a society from corruption…that persons exercising public functions can and sometimes do inflict immense, often irreparable damage to a country” by acting without concern for the public interest and without integrity. Page 2 of 12 (PLEASE CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY)

And this leads me to another reason why it is so important to highlight the principle of integrity. We have often heard the saying, ‘if the head of the stream is dirty so will the bottom b e’ and the truth is that across too many parts of today’s w orld, it is the absence of integrity which is making “the head of th e stream dirty ” and it is this which is contributing to making the lives of so many tens of millions of people so hard while at the same time facilitating the enrichment of the few. This is not an exaggeration; seven years ago, in 2008/9, a financial crisis engulfed the global economy, brought about massive losses of income, of jobs, of wages and of wealth, including 5.5 million jobs and 360 billion dollars in wages in the United States alone. We in Jamaica, like every country around the world, also experienced the impact and are still feeling the consequences of that global crisis, contributing to almost 40 % of young people in our county not being able to find decent work. And what was a main cause of this continuing devastation – lack of integrity amongst leaders in the financial system, leading to decisions motivated by selfishness and greed, revealing flawed characters and dysfunctional leadership. In fact, the US Government Commission of Enquiry into the Financial Crisis, after looking at all the evidence, actually concluded that a main cause of the crisis was “systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics”. In other words greed, fraud and corruption. Please remember that here we are taking about lack of integrity, not so much in politics but at the pinnacle of the private sector, at the very top some of the most renowned and reputable banks and financial institutions, so much so that up until the end of October 2015 The US Security and Exchange Commission imposed almost US$4 billion in penalties for misconduct on companies like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Securities, Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Page 3 of 12 (PLEASE CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY)

Deutsche Bank among others. So there can be little doubt that the head of the integrity stream in private sector financial institutions was dirty with disastrous consequences. What about the integrity stream in politics? In the last two months alone, what have we seen? Look across the world---Corrupt practices have led to the resignation and corruption charges against the President of Guatemala, against Donald Sang, the former Head of Government in Hong Kong, against the former oil Minister in Nigeria; corruption charges have led to the suspension of 7 of 12 High Court Judges in Ghana, the resignation of the entire Government in Egypt and the indictment of the Prime Minister in Romania. Going further back, just 4 years ago, in England 4 Members of Parliament and 2 Members of the House of Lords were jailed in 2011 for lying about the use of Parliamentary allowances and expenses; in the US 4 Members of Congress have been sent to prison since 2009 for corruption. And just in case you’re thinking that lack of integrity is confined to bankers and politicians, what about the Head of the stream in football and in track athletics? In football fourteen leaders of FIFA have been charged, including Jack Warner one of the FIFA Executives from Trinidad and Tobago. The President for seventeen years of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, has now been suspended and is also facing charges from Swiss and American prosecutors. Then there is the world of track athletics in which Jamaica remains a colossus. Just a few days ago the President, for sixteen years, of the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), Lamine Diack, was placed under investigation by French police following allegations that Russian athletes were protected after Page 4 of 12 (PLEASE CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY)

failing drug tests. There is no question that IAAF, like FIFA, is facing the worst crisis in its entire history. And then to cap it all, the former President of the UN General Assembly in 2013/14, John Ashe from Antigua / Barbuda, is before the courts in the US accused of taking $ 1. 3 million in bribes from a Chinese business tycoon. So, in far too many places, we are seeing that lack of integrity and leaders looking out for themselves are guiding too much of the world of finance, of politics and of sport. This is leading to a dangerous situation where, for example, a 2013 survey of 107 countries, including Jamaica, found that in most countries the people are convinced that government, political parties and even elections are not serving their interest, the public interest but rather the private interest of a chosen few. Jamaica is of course not exempt from this trend, from this deficit of integrity. Quite apart from what we the citizens observe, too many official reports reveal complete disregard among too many leaders for doing the right thing, for being examples of quality leadership. Take the investigation report last year of the Office of the Contractor General into contract awards in the Hanover Parish Council. The report revealed that the chief citizen of the Parish, the Mayor was, in effect, handing out contracts left, right and centre, in defiance of proper procedure, to any and every member of her family that she could find. Then there is the report of the Electoral Office of Jamaica on the last General election of 2011. This report revealed that eighty (80) of the one hundred and fifty (150) candidates, forty five (45) from the JLP and seventeen (17), from the PNP have failed to file returns within 6 weeks of the Page 5 of 12 (PLEASE CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY)