Latest update April 18th, 2025 8:12 AM
Watchdog group says…We have confidence in Ram, Goolsarran to conduct audits
As the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) continues to air its concern over the conducting of forensic audits
Christopher-Ram
by Christopher Ram and Anand Goolsarran, a local watchdog group has maintained that it has every confidence in the men’s professionalism.
The group, Transparency Institute Guyana Inc. (TIGI) further said that the PPP’s recent assertions in relation to Ram and Goolsarran show the party’s continued belief that if someone criticizes it, then that person is against the entire party.
Since coming into power last month, the APNU+AFC government has ordered forensic audits into almost 30 state agencies, national projects and funds. The purpose of the audits was to determine whether these government agencies were running accordingly and without corruption.
In an interview with Kaieteur News, TIGI President Calvin Bernard shared that Ram is a director of the watchdog group while Goolsarran is the immediate past president.
“He [Ram] has other things that are part of his professional life but we can’t ignore the fact that he’s a member of TIGI. That in itself says we have confidence in him to act in a professional manner. Mr. Goolsarran was the immediate past president of TIGI and again, it’s the same thing; TIGI has significant confidence in these individuals to carry out their functions in a professional manner,” Bernard maintained.
He emphasised that he did not take seriously any cries by the party of inherent biases. “These are people who are speaking out from a professional standpoint against the previous administration because their
Anand Goolsarran
professional opinions led to them being against what was going on. And if they’re now conducting audits, then they are performing their professional duties,” Bernard opined.
However, he said, the PPP’s complaints is a reflection of a position held by the previous administration. “Basically, it’s ‘if you’re not for me, you’re against me’. They believed that if you are anti-corruption, then you are anti-government,” Bernard said. “Or if you’re anti-PPP, you were automatically anti-government,” he added.
Bernard explained that the group had similarly been attacked by the PPP. He added that his personal life has not been spared.
“It was a very untenable type of situation to work in because from the time you spoke you’re labeled,” he said. He said that he had previously been accused of being a member of the People’s National Congress (PNC), simply because of his surname and the criticisms he would raise of the PPP government.
“The first reaction was to affiliate me to a party and I never had any sort of political affiliation with. That was the general thing; if you speak against something the PPP was doing, then automatically you were against them, you were against the government, you were even deemed anti-Guyanese.”
During a recent press conference Former Attorney General Anil Nandlall had expressed the party’s discomfort with Ram and Goolsarran playing integral roles in the forensic audits of several government agencies. According to Nandlall, both Ram and Goolsarran had been highly critical of the PPP in the past and would approach the audits with bias.
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