GREED AND NEED

Mar 09, 2022 Features / Columnists, News, Peeping Tom

---

Kaieteur News- The Opposition has objected to the outcome of the parliamentary process used to select a representative to sit on the National Resource Fund Board. Its objection is spurious.
The PPP/C apparently used its majority to impose one of its nominees on the process. The Opposition contends that the PPP/C should not have allowed one of the Opposition nominees.
The PNC/R, the main party of the APNU, came out swinging. It lambasted the PPP/C saying that, by its actions, the ruling party had displayed a lack of commitment to transparency, accountability and inclusivity and was bent on striving for political dominance and control.
The fact of the matter is that there is no consensus mechanism within the Appointments Committee and this is a direct result of the APNU and the AFC machinations following the 2011 elections. After those elections, the PPP/C found itself as a minority in the National Assembly.
It was the APNU and the AFC which used its one-seat majority to change the rules to ensure that the party or parties with the majority in the National Assembly would hold a majority within parliamentary committees. As such, the APNU+AFC simply got a taste of its own medicine.
But the APNU+AFC needs to also realise that while it may have been desirable, from the position of political inclusion, for one of its candidate to be appointed, the law provides for Parliament and not for the Opposition to select one representative to the Board. As such, there is no legal entitlement for that person to come from the Opposition.
But the Opposition also has no moral grounds to complain. The Opposition ought not to be in the National Assembly given its disgraceful conduct between 2nd March and 2nd August, 2020 when it proved itself as being unfit to sit in a democratic institution.
It was also the APNU+AFC which created a ruckus in the National Assembly during the debate on the Natural Resource Fund Bill. The said APNU+AFC had said that the Bill was not legal. It is yet to file a legal challenge to the legality of the Act.
So why then does it wish to participate in the parliamentary process to select someone to sit on a Board which is a creature of an Act which the Opposition claims was not lawfully passed in the House?
The Natural Resource Act provides that persons who are members of parliament shall not be appointed to the Board of Directors. This would implicitly exclude both those who are presently members and those who are eligible to be members of the National Assembly since the clear intention of the Board is to depoliticise it.
The Opposition nominated three persons: Elson Low, Christopher Ram and Dr. Vincent Adams. None of the 3 names are on the APNU+AFC’s National Top Up List but given the government’s position that the members should be non-political, it would mean that if any of them is or was a member of the Executive of a political party, then that person should ideally not sit on the Board.
Also, persons who were critical, publicly of the establishment of the Board, should equally decline to sit on the Board. It is difficult to see how someone who was critical of the Board could still agree to be nominated to sit on it.
The Board however, is not the organ which the Opposition should be keen to be represented on. The Board is subject to policy directives from the Minister of Finance and is lawfully bound to give effect to those policy directives. The Board is also accountable to the Minister of Finance.
The more important organ for which the Opposition should be seeking a presence is the Public Accountability and Oversight Committee. This Committee is also expected to comprise a nominee from the National Assembly.
The Opposition has reservations about the legality of the Natural Resource Fund Act. But it says that it decided to nominate someone so that it can have a role on observing what is taking place with the oil monies. The best place for it to exercise this sort of oversight is to press to have its nominee on the Public Accountability and Oversight Committee.
Now that the Opposition has complained about the government choosing one of the ruling party’s nominee for the Board of Directors, the Opposition should be pressing that its nominee sit on the Public Accountability and Oversight Committee. The PPP/C got its nominee for the Board of Directors and the APNU+AFC may feel that it should get its nominee, when the time comes, for the Public Accountability and Oversight Committee.
We shall have to wait and see if the PPP/C is greedy enough to want both corn and husk. Don’t bet on it though.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

---