PNCR calls on police to probe bribery allegations against Jagdeo

Feb 09, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – With new allegations of corruption and bribery surfacing against Guyana’s Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo, the largest party in the political Opposition, the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) has called on the Guyana Police Force (GPF) to investigate the reports.
On February 1, 2022, the VP was interviewed by an American Media company, Vice News where he was questioned about alleged kickbacks received from a Chinese national for projects. During a news conference on Tuesday, the Leader of the PNCR, Aubrey Norton, when asked to weigh in on the matter told reporters that the allegations are not new as the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government is known for its history of “extreme corruption” under Jagdeo’s stewardship and “now that he is the de facto head one can understand the continuation”.

Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo

Norton said that while it is only obvious for the VP to deny the allegations, the GPF must be called in to perform its duties. Another option, according to the PNCR Leader for Jagdeo to put the allegations to sleep, is by making his bank accounts public. “He can take his assets, put it against his earnings, in the way normal citizens have to do to get loans from the banks etcetera and if he does that and can establish that the wealth he has is above board and not in contravention of law then that would help to put these allegations to sleep,” Norton reasoned.
He did not spare the opportunity to highlight that a closer look at the wealth of the PPP family and friends, is underpinned by corruption. As a consequence, Norton said, “I also would like to call on the Guyana Police Force to investigate the allegation. It is law enforcement’s responsibility to, when allegations of this nature are made, investigate”.
The PNCR Chairman was keen to note that government should not interfere by preventing the police from investigating the matter. According to him, “The question of whether the government would allow them to investigate should not arise because constitutionally, they are the Guyana Police Force. They are the law enforcement agency and it should follow ipso facto that they should be allowed to investigate and to say to the Guyanese public what the reality is”.
On this note he said that the incumbent administration has never allowed responsible oversight and anti-corruption agencies to carry out their functions. While he said he is not sure whether the GPF would be allowed to do its work, he is hopeful that if the investigation is done and reports of corruption and bribery are confirmed that the law would be able to take its course.

PNCR Chairman, Aubrey Norton

Only recently, Transparency International (TI) an independent agency that assesses the public sector in countries across the globe for corruption drew the conclusion that corruption under the PPP has returned.
Transparency International, in its recently published Corruption Perception Index presented a chart which depicted that when the Coalition Party assumed office in 2015, Guyana’s score stood at 29. The following year, it progressed to 34, and in 2017, it jumped to 38. In 2018, Guyana dropped a point but in 2019, it again increased to 40 and finally, 41 in 2020.
In 2021, after a full year of leadership under the PPP, the country’s ranking dropped to 39 out of 180 countries. It must be noted that a country’s score is measured on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean.
Back in 2009, the United Nations Refugee Agency in a report on Human Rights Practices in Guyana highlighted areas of corruption as a result of poor leadership.
That report states, “The law provides for criminal penalties for official corruption; however, the government did not implement the law effectively. The World Bank’s worldwide governance indicators reflected that government corruption was a serious problem. There was a widespread public perception of serious corruption in the government, including law enforcement and the judicial system. Low-wage public servants were easy targets for bribery”. https://www.refworld.org/docid/4b9e52ef6e.html
The same report unfortunately cited that even though public officials were subject to laws which required them to submit information on personal assets to the Integrity Commission, numerous members failed to comply. In another instance, the 2009 report flagged that the law did not provide for public access to information and government officials were generally reluctant to share same without prior approval from senior officials.