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Moses, Joe, Raphael; Guyana’s three stooges

Sep 02, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
Every day that passes under the Granger administration, it is becoming more obvious that there is one set of standards for “George Norton and his Cabinet colleagues” and one for everyone else. Was it not Minister Ramjattan who at the AFC Conference in 2014 who said “he shall fire, fry and jail the corrupt…”? So what has he done with the corrupt PNC officials today? In a truly hypocritical style, we hear some first class twaddle when he suggested “we are human, not a cabinet of angels, we will make mistakes”. What malarkey! Another one bites the dust! What a hypocrite?
This corrupt “Norton-PharmaBond Gate” deal reveals that many laws were broken. But what no one seems to be getting, is that Minister Norton could not have executed this deal alone without overarching certification from the Minister of Finance, Mr. Jordan. It was Minister Jordan who had to approve the emergency expenditure from the Contingency Fund without just cause, to fund the purchase of this private building with public funds. It was Minister Jordan who is aware that this deal cost 4 times more than the old New GPC deal, per square foot, but still went ahead and sanctioned this corrupt deal.
It was Minister Jordan who had to guide Cabinet on the financial angle to justify why they should sole source this contract that is valued at $450 million over three years, totally ignoring the competitive tendering process. It was Minister Jordan who had to approve the payment to the contractor on this crooked deal and continues to sign the check on more millions for this contractor every month.
Although the three stooges, Raphael, Moses and Joe did their very best to rubber stamp this corrupt contract by finding some of the most irresponsible excuses we have heard in a very long time, such as “it is not safe to store the drug in one location” and “the location at Diamond can affect the supply chain”, everyone knew their actions were similar to the “RED Indians” (no offence intended please!) circling the burning wagons. The Guyanese people know that these funds are not being used properly and have already concluded that public theft has happened. But why? Was this money used to support their just concluded Congress? Is this money being used to support the upcoming AFC Conference? How many politicians’ pockets were fattened by chunks of the cash from this deal?
Compare the answers to those questions with commonsense and we can easily conclude that essentially the entire Cabinet are co-conspirators in this corrupt deal. So until this corrupt contract is rescinded, President David Arthur Granger has to be held accountable for this massive act of corruption and that kind of mud will not wipe away easily. Now I ask the question, where is this signed contract? When I raised this question with a senior official in the Ministry of Health he smirked that it was “packaged and shipped off to the Vatican Secret Archives” because not even people in the Ministry of Health have seen this contract. But every month the Finance Office in the Ministry is being asked to prepare payment vouchers for this contractor worth millions.
I wonder why the Office of the Auditor General has not launched a Special Audit Investigation into this open act of corruption by the Granger administration. I also wonder why Professor Clive Thomas and his SARA outfit, has not launched a criminal enquiry into the lost state assets because of this “Norton-PharmaBond Gate” deal. Lastly, isn’t this money laundering? So I wonder why SOCU remains dormant on this corrupt transaction? Why have they not asked for the bank records of Larry Singh and George Norton and the entire Cabinet including the President?
I am calling on the US Ambassador and the UK High Commissioner to ensure that this entire episode of corruption is logged with Washington (especially at the IDB HQ) and London respectively so that when future aid and financial support are under consideration for Guyana, one of the covenants of any future agreement has to be a heavy dose of measures to strengthen our systems to enhance good governance because the nation cannot trust the Granger Government anymore.
Jai (Harry) Lall

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