True democrats will want to be scrutinised

Jul 18, 2010 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

By Khemraj Ramjattan, AFC Chairman

The pre-emptive strike made by Mr. Nandlall, Attorney-at-Law for President Jagdeo on the matter of the sale of the President’s house, that “the entire transaction is transparent”, rings so empty and hollow.

Instead of avoiding unnecessary speculation it has caused raised eyebrows and created fertile ground for suspicious of all kind.

The credibility of this personal transaction reminds me of the credibility of a previous personal matter of His Excellency, his marriage to Ms. Varshnie Singh some years ago. Every ritual was gone through. Well almost. And as we all know now, it turned out not to be a marriage under our laws after all. It was a sham!

Past conduct, experience teaches, is a good basis for making judgements.

I have seen that property along with and many others and I would have thought that no prudent businessman will pay $600,000.00 U.S. [six hundred thousand United States dollars] for that.

I suppose the argument could be made that the President was just lucky to get a friend of his to pay that price, a friend who played a major role in campaigning for him to become President and one who he appointed Honorary Consul! Wow! How come others don’t get hold of such generous purchasers?

Quite frankly, it is my opinion that it has nothing to do with luck at all! What it has to do with, Glenn Lall and Adam Harris will hesitate to print. I respect their reluctance.

They both have seen how His Excellency uses his Presidential powers. All those powers are PNC creatures which today terribly haunts that Party.

How does he use these powers? As a sword to sue Freddie Kissoon and Kaieteur News for labeling him a certain King; but as a shield to avoid being sued as when CN Sharma instituted proceedings against him for arbitrarily closing down Sharma’s T.V. Station for 4 months. What double standards by the highest official in the land!

The PPP and its prospective Presidential hopefuls will never utter a word in condemnation of this abuse.

What they will not condemn either is the onslaught against World Bank Representative Mr. Georgio Valentini by Minister Ashni Singh. This Minister’s assault on that Financial Institution and its Guyana Rep was utterly unbecoming. But there is a method to this madness and it has to do with a recent more strident call for probity and scrutiny in public spending by the World Bank.

I want to also make this point. Though the AFC questioned seriously the LCDS and how it will affect negatively loggers and miners, when it met the Norwegian officials last year, on the issue concerning inflows which will come to Guyana, it made it quite clear that such inflows will be coming in to an unaccountable and very opaque Government. We revealed to these officials why this was our position and urged that Norway has an obligation to ensure that whatever monies come into the country must be well spent through an institution which has the power not to be cowered by any bullyism by this Government. This institution, as it turned out to be, is the World Bank; and I am happy to see that so far its Guyana Representative, has not been cowered by Ashni’s antics in telling him how the Bank’s affairs should be conducted here in Guyana.

The Public Revenue in Guyana, whether from aid or from taxation, has been a trough for political patronage. Systems of financial scrutiny have been dismantled from the top. Examples being the Lotto funds, and revenue collected by NICIL which are not being put into the Consolidated Fund, which at least suffers some amount of Parliamentary scrutiny. But big ones like Irfaan Alli and Ashni Singh, as happened earlier this year, have also tried to hide spending of amounts as high as $4B (four billion dollars) which were never approved by the National Assembly, at the time of disbursement. I just hope that my Motion to have these two Ministers censored will be supported by the PPP members of the Assembly. The Motions have already been sent to the Clerk of the Assembly.

And so a governance conditionality seems to be biting deep into this corrupt Government. The effect is to ensure public monies is not diverted to private ends. That is why its Ministers are going to rant and rave against the TIP Report, the Economic Intelligence Report, the World Bank and so on. All the ranting and raving, however, will be to no avail.