Financial violations

Dec 23, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The words of Guyana’s Auditor General give off a tired, distraught sound. Still, the Audit Office reports, regarding what is going on in this country, under government after government, with the taxpayers’ money and which must be presented in a professional, even bland manner.

We, though, can be sharper and unsparing in what we consider the continuing, never-ending mishandling of the great national responsibilities placed in the hands of Guyana’s two major parties. The kind of governance they dealt in, and the sordid results of such governance. It is always about money, millions upon millions of dollars, and year after year.
We begin with our caption: “PPP/C, PNC repeatedly ignore remedies to fix flagrant financial violations…Auditor General concerned as 62% of recommendations not implemented” (KN December 16). This means that 3 out of 5 recommendations are routinely scorned, in that they are discarded in some Permanent Secretary’s or Minister’s garbage can, for all the interest and attention given to them. We believe they all have a good laugh, roll their eyes, and move on to the next set of financial violations in the year that follows, and all the other succeeding ones, while they are in control of the nation’s purse, as the government of the day.
We will tell our fellow Guyanese what “financial violations” mean in the most scorching terms. They mean chronic thieveries, where the system is being gamed, and none, not any of them in either PPP/C or PNC Governments give a damn about how the people’s monies, projects, and businesses are managed. Instead of the great care of the prudent man’s rule to protect and handle with honour and principle the financial duties of this country, there is ongoing adherence to the perverse (plundering) man’s law, the law of the Government bandit, which gouges Guyanese year over draining year.
The Auditor General summed it up clinically: “…in many instances, recommendations are repeated every year without appropriate action and as a result, weaknesses and issues that impacted negatively on Government’s governance and accountability mechanisms continue to occur.” That was AG Deodat Sharma, and what he said in effect, can be translated to this: recommendations are ignored, nothing happens, and it is the same sick and shabby and costly story with public money every year.
We interpret this to mean that loopholes are not closed, enhancements not followed, because doing so will shut down the gravy train that is the people’s money. The record is of PPP/C and PNC Governments presiding over banditry, upholding financial violations, which are failures at best, or frauds, at their worst. They will not act upon improvements, because that will lessen their take, reduce the spoils. So they continue playing the fool, by leaving the financial violations alone. Earlier, we pinpointed Ministers and Permanent Secretaries, to which we add General Managers and Commissioners (and other heads of departments), for the simple reason that they are the officers in charge, whether politically or administratively, and at the end of the day, the obligations to facilitate and oversee implementation of repeated recommendations rest first and always in their hands.
They are the people in charge, so they have to hear the criticisms, absorb the blows, and do something. This is the proof so needed, yet so missing. That is, for the offices named to do something tangible. That which delivers tightening and improvements to systems, and bring people under their stewardship to be booked for failure to implement and enforce, and then document properly and consistently, pursuant to the AG’s recommendations.
It is a sad state in this country, when the AG has to lament repeatedly the waste of taxpayers’ resources. The costly gaps that are never closed, the inactions of senior public officers, be they elected or selected. Surely, these senior officers have some pride, possess some self-respect about themselves. There must be a small handful of them that know what is right, which begs the question as to why the right actions and measures are not happening.
The PPP/C and the PNC are proud of their shallow manifestoes and meaningless elections promises relative to clean governance. They throw stones at each other, but as the AG’s report confirms, both are as dirty and criminal as the other.

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