Does the previous AG’s 2004 departure hold clues why his successor is still acting after six years?

Oct 31, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
With the Auditor General’s (AG) 2009 report tabled before Parliament on Friday, October 22, the nation has learned yet again that the Caribbean’s most corrupt government continues to live up to its unmatched reputation.
I have often described the Jagdeo regime as the most corrupt in the region, and Transparency International’s report for 2010 bears me out on this. Of the CARICOM countries surveyed, Guyana is ranked behind them all: Barbados ranks 17th, Trinidad ranks 73rd, Jamaica ranks 87th, and Guyana ranks 116th.
Anyway, the latest AG report, not yet available to the public on the Internet, appears to single out continued abuse of the Contingencies Fund and overpayments to government contractors as areas of grave concern.
But while we already know there are other areas that are of grave concern, the number one question on observers’ minds is: What exactly is responsible for such bare-faced recurring abuses in the government?
There are laws on the books. There is the law enforcement agency. There is the judicial branch of government. There is even a correction and rehabilitation unit. So why is there a lack of will on government’s part to seriously address the abuses?
Talking with a Guyanese friend in Queens this past week, he said whenever the body gets sick and nothing is being done to remedy it, there is likely a problem with the head. He further observed that one law of physics says that if you pour water on a human’s head while the person is standing the water will gravitate downward to the body.
I couldn’t help smiling at his analogy, because I realised that the body of government could only be affected by criminal corruption for as long as the head of the body does little or nothing to seriously correct the problem.
I then told him of a speech the President, mere months on the job, gave to Guyanese in Florida in 1999, pledging to return to Guyana and pass legislation to deal with corruption, especially against revenue officers and restore transparency and accountability in government.
It took the President nine years to actually act on the end game of his pledge to corral the revenue officers, and when he did it was not based on application of the law, but on a mechanism the law does not even recognise: polygraph testing.
Why the President would opt for polygraph testing (limited to low level state employees) over the application of the law continues to be fodder for conversation and even speculation that if he goes for the law he would have to go after even those who are supporters of his party.
But when I mentioned to my friend that right in the Office of the President there is a problem with adhering to the law on NICIL’s operations and the Lotto/Consolidated Funds, and pointed out that the Constitution protects the President from indictments and lawsuits for acts committed while in office, he smiled and told me that right there is the axis around which the corruption problem in government revolves.
Though he did not make any direct accusations, I quite understood where he was coming from, but then I told him that not everyone in government supports the corruption, citing the Auditor General as one of the handful of top government officials who chose to take a stand on principle.
My friend then blurted out, “That’s why he is still acting after six years. He is not a political loyalist or one of the boys!”
That observation made me rush home to Google the exact length of time the current AG has been acting and determine whether the circumstances that triggered his predecessor’s departure from the job could shed light on his own lengthy acting tenure.
According to a Kaieteur News story, “Auditor General tenders resignation – says position has been stressful,” (December 30, 2004), Mr. Anand Goolsarran cited ‘stress’ as the main reason for his resignation in 2004.
But the story says ‘speculation was rife that Mr.Goolsarran’s decision may have stemmed from the public spat between the Auditor General and President Jagdeo over the decision by Mr. Goolsarran in October that year to conduct an overall investigation into the Wildlife Division, when the Audit Office had just concluded an audit of the trade in dolphins and anteaters’.
He then reportedly ‘attracted the ire of President (Bharrat) Jagdeo when he wrote the Head of State protesting what he termed ‘veiled threats’ by the HPS who accused him of “headhunting” the HPS and other officials of the Office of the President with his decision to conduct a thorough investigation into the Wildlife Division.
He also cited the President as attacking him personally to a level that was scathing and unjustified, when he wrote in his letter to the President that “…in previous conversations with you, you attacked me for being unprofessional and for my failure to resign from office.”
Mr. Goolsarran also pointed out that the President berated him for revisiting the work done by the Audit Office in relation to the operations of the Wildlife Division and the Office of the President, and contended that ‘threats were made by the President that a second opinion would be sought on the work done by the Auditor General’s Office’.
Before demitting office December 2004, Mr. Goolsarran promised to have the Audit Office’s report of the investigation presented to the Speaker of the National Assembly, while HPS said that the report was with the Guyana Wildlife Management Authority where it was being reviewed.
Ironically, two senior OP employees associated with the illegal dolphin export scandal (then Presidential Adviser on Community Development and Empowerment Odinga Lumumba and then head of the Wildlife Unit Kellawan Lall) are still employed by government, while some news accounts stated that the documents related to the dolphin report floated away in the ‘great flood’ of January 2005.
End of that story? Maybe, but what does the apparent ‘stress’ and obvious ‘standoff’ between the preceding AG and the Jagdeo Government mean to the current AG who continues to act instead of being confirmed after almost six years on the job?
His disturbing reports have to be grating on the President’s nerves!
Emile Mervin

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