No major government corruption case has even gone to trial

Jun 27, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
PPP presidential candidate, Mr. Donald Ramotar, in his latest comment on corruption, said that if persons are found guilty of corruption, the law should be allowed to take its course (Kaieteur News, June 26).
The problem with this statement is that despite the Auditor-General’s annual reports and many horror stories, sometimes accompanied by jaw-dropping pictures of screwed up projects reported by Kaieteur News, and despite everybody knowing that there are misappropriations of state funds and resources, we have not had a major government corruption case that went to trial and the accused being convicted.
Only last week, the Parliamentary Accounts Committee reported some troubling discoveries it made pertinent to the 2007 and 2008 audited accounts for government ministries and agencies, even going so far as to contemplate calling in the police. Did Mr. Ramotar not read this in the media? Did the President promise to help the PAC get the police involved?
These latest discoveries merely reflect an ongoing pattern of bare-faced rip-offs by people who should be indicted on criminal charges and made to make restitution or have their assets and bank accounts seized in the amount of money reportedly siphoned.
So when the PPP presidential candidate now says that if people are found guilty that the law should take its course, I have to ask where was his voice for the last 19 years as a leading member of the party that forms the government.
The silence of the PPP General Secretary throughout this period, and even after he became the party’s de facto head, speaks loudly about what the nation can expect if Mr. Ramotar becomes President.
Can anyone imagine Mr. Ramotar saying with a straight face that, ‘when a newly constructed road goes bad, this cannot be counted as corruption, because the PPP government has taken a hands-off approach when it comes to the award of contracts’?
This is the strongest confirmation yet that the fully detached Mr. Ramotar does not grasp the essence of managerial responsibility, but especially when it comes to being responsible for public funds.
Mr. Ramotar’s asinine posture is that, for example, after the government gives a contract worth $20M to a contractor to build a road or a facility and the project is screwed up, the government can’t be blamed, because the government takes a hands-off approach once the contract is awarded. Oh, really? Would Mr. Ramotar do that with his own money on a property he is trying to develop? I didn’t think so, yet this is the man who wants to be the next President of Guyana?
But this is not surprising anymore, because this is the same man who sat on the GuySuCo Board and watched quietly as GuySuCo recorded a GY$3B loss in 2008, along with the royal screwing up of the US$200M Skeldon Plant. How much more irresponsible than this can Mr. Ramotar get, having sat quietly while the PPP regime ran amok with corruption and GuySuCo tanked financially?
And to hear him justify the government’s spending of US$12.5M to build the Enmore Sugar Packaging Plant – “Everything in that regard (the construction of the Enmore plant) was (above) board,” he said – when it was brought to government’s attention that Kenya built a bigger packaging plant for US$3M, completes our understanding of the type of leader the PPP is seeking to foist on us in 2011.
Whereas the PPP gave us a mini cooper with a large trunk space in 1999, and the trunk has since been ‘ram-packed’ with the people’s ‘goodies’, the PPP is now trying to give us a used ambulance with a detached and delusional patient hooked up to saline bottles and oxygen tanks. Bottles and tanks may keep you alive; they don’t make you think straight.
In closing, Mr. Ramotar also said that at the economic level, the PPP/C has moved Guyana from being a basket case in 1992 to being the most dynamic economy in the Caribbean today (“Ramotar says PPP ready for polls,” (KN, June 26).
Someone needs to tell Mr. Ramotar that the dynamic economy of which he speaks is being sustained by the informal economy: drugs, money laundering, foreign remittances and foreign loans.  Clearly, the UG educated economist plans to continue relying on the informal economy, which supports corruption.
He also said at the political stage, Guyana is now one of the most democratic nations in the world. “All the fundamental freedoms and human rights are protected,” he declared.
Truth is, after almost 19 years, Guyana still has one radio station, there is no broadcast legislation, there has been no Local Government Election since 1994, there is no Freedom of Information Law (and government is now said to be proposing the appointment of an Information Commissioner to go along with the FOI law, which defeats the whole independent concept of such a law). The President and government are also known for trying to stifle Kaieteur News and Stabroek News.
Moreover, why is there no probe into the 2002-2004 crime spree and extra judicial killings? How can Roger Khan be jailed in New York on drug smuggling charges, but not in Guyana? Why are so many people on remand awaiting trial after many years?
Mr. Ramotar may believe he is a member of the PPP political entitlement elite class, but when it comes to the issues on the ground, he has his head stuck in dark clouds and his feet in the crab mud. His naked political body is exposed to the elements but he thinks he is wearing a dark two-piece suit that everybody admires.
Emile Mervin

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