The VP promises, we shall see

Jun 17, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The Hon. Vice President of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, made a promise in a press conference he held on Wednesday (June 15) (“Secretive large-scale mining contracts must be made public on request -Jagdeo…promises to activate Freedom of Information Act” -KN June 16).

It is not the first time the Vice President has made a promise involving serious matters with national significance, and our hope is that this time, he will honour his promise. Time will tell soon enough and one way or another.

We have every intention of holding Mr. Jagdeo to that promise given in clear language, on this occasion, a most refreshing change from how he has been in the past. Mr. Jagdeo said that, “the contracts are with the agencies”, which means the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the office of the Commissioner of Information; he expressed a thought that the contracts in question might be with the Guyana and Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) which, like the GRA, were the agencies of the State that would have signed off on them, since they involved concessions, among other things. When taken together, and if this is accurate, then three national entities, at least, have copies of these contracts with large-scale mining companies that are mainly foreign in origins.

The fact that the contracts were in such hands, and that there have been ongoing public calls to put them into the open, but those have failed to gain any reaction (until the VP’s Wednesday press conference) from any place or anyone is not reassuring in the least. It as if the official stance was ‘ask for it first, then come and get it, if it is really wanted.’ We will not make any judgments about why this was so, or why this is only coming out now. The point is that Vice President Jagdeo has spoken, and his word was that the contracts are there, and they should be made available for inspection and more. After all, those contracts are the property of the Guyanese people, and they have a right to any kind of scrutiny that they determine to be fit.
Specifically, the Vice President was also keen to note that “we passed just before I left office a Freedom of Information Act” and “I am going to talk to the President (Irfaan Ali) that we put in place a mechanism to operationalise (the freedom of information provisions) if it is not in place already.” There ought to be no question, or issue, about the urgency “to operationalise” the FOIA if this was not already done. Regardless of what is the state with this possible spanner in the works (“operationalise”), we will not criticise, but take at face value what the Vice President said. We do regret, however, that getting an understanding of where issues of these kinds stand, and gaining access to what is due, has become the equivalent of pulling teeth. In a truly functioning democracy and with what comes from the mouths of powerful leaders, this just should not be.

We find it hard to believe, much more to digest, that despite the public clamor from this paper and other dogged Guyanese and outside sources, nobody was forthcoming, not a single senior public servant (or politician) said a word. We take that in stride, and agree with the Vice President when he said that, “I think that the reporters have to start utilising more that provision, I am going to make sure that we discuss this seriously.” We react to this in three ways.
The first is that media professionals must do more digging to get to the source of information possibly there, and waiting for the unearthing. The second is that we are surprised that the Vice President himself could have failed to hear the loud and repeated calls to make public the contracts signed with large-scale foreign mining companies. We know that we have done so more than a handful of times. And the third is that the Vice President shared that he will “make sure that we discuss this seriously.” We take him seriously, and will study where all this leads, if only to ensure that it is not just talk.