WHY WORRY? BE HAPPY!

Feb 09, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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So what if the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Bill is not passed by tomorrow in the National Assembly? So what if Guyana is subject to sanctions from the international community because of its failure to be compliant with its international obligations to update its anti- money laundering legislation.
Guyanese have already been affected by the failure to pass the necessary amendments.  The last time the Bill was not passed after eight months of on-and-off discussions and had to be referred back to a Select Committee, there was a rapid slide in the value of the Guyana dollar. This slide was caused because certain foreign financial institutions demanded a higher rate of exchange for credit card transactions and this fed into the system.
It may have escaped notice that since all this confusion over the anti-money laundering legislation, the Guyana dollar has depreciated appreciably. It may have escaped noticed that the buying rate for the US dollar is at US$1 to G$213, and for certain credit card transactions it is as high as US$1 to US$230. Guyanese are already facing higher prices which will not come down.
Another round of delays in passing the necessary legislation and the real possibility of blacklisting is likely to trigger another decline. But why worry about hurrying to pass legislation that will hardly ever be used?
Does anyone really believe that even if we have the best legislation in place that it will allow for prosecutions of money laundering? That is the hardest charge of prosecute. If you think that having someone extradited is difficult, try having a successful prosecution for money laundering. The problem is not just in Guyana; it is the same all over the world. How many persons, for example, are successfully prosecuted each year in the largest narco-economy in the world, the United States of America? How many?
Any laws we pass are going to end up in deep freeze?
Why worry? Be happy!
Right now things are so good in Guyana that people take for granted some of the comforts they presently enjoy. Driving along the roadways of Guyana, you wonder if drivers use their horns to create music for entertainment. It seems that Guyanese drivers are so impatient that they honk their horns simply out of impatience.
A little hard time, may restore some patience. There used to be a time in Guyana when you had to stand on the roadways for hours just to get transportation to go a short distance. That was when the economy was in a bad shape and not any people owned cars. The small number that did could barely afford the spare parts. So there were not many hire cars on the roadway, even though there was the demand for transportation. People learnt then the value of patience. They stood and they waited. They did not complain.
Today when persons have to stand in line, they become agitated. They hurl abuse at whomever they feel is not attending to them quickly enough. They can do so because they have the option now of going somewhere else and are thus not inclined to line up for anything.
But there used to be a time when pressure was the order of the day in Guyana, when people saw a line, joined it and then asked what it was for. Nobody complained about the service then. They were more anxious then to know if by the time their turn arrived, whether whatever item was being sold or distributed would have been finished. A return to hard times may allow Guyanese to once again understand the virtue of patience.
Today, the young men have a lot of money to spare. They go to the bars and they splurge. They have a vast array of beers to choose from. There used to be a time in Guyana when you had to decide whether you could afford to buy a beer or whether having food on your table meant drinking cheap white rum rather than having a beer.  A return to hard times may actually make people become more responsible in their spending.
If the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Bill is further delayed, it will bring some amount of hardship. And it is the small man on whom most of the hardship will fall. So while this political rigmarole about who should sit in as observers at special select committees creates anxieties as to whether Guyana will meet the deadline set by the international partners of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force, Guyanese should begin to brace themselves for a possible return to hard times.
But good can come out of such a return. If the sanctions lead us to honk our horns less, to be more patient when in line and to waste less money on alcohol, then the gridlock within parliament may have served some useful purpose after all.

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