Transparency – PPP/C Government Style

Dec 14, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – It could be that the PPP/C Government has gotten so carried away with this nation’s oil bonanza that it has lost all track of time. It is now two years since the specially recruited Canadian Consultant, Ms. Alison Redford, QC, and her team completed their review of Guyana’s Payara project. Guyanese are still in darkness, know nothing about either the positives or the question marks about that 3^rd oil project. This is the kind of transparency of which the PPP/C Government is proud, the degree of transparency that His Excellency, President Irfaan Ali, is delighted to say he is about, but which leaves both the sensible and the unlearned openmouthed in astonishment.

Secrecy with our oil wealth is killing this nation that doesn’t have the faintest idea of all the shenanigans that are now part and parcel with this oil wealth. Shenanigans include foreigners and collaborating locals taking advantage of, and misleading, the Guyanese people at every turn in the road. It took a mere 42 days for the former Premier of the province of Alberta, Canada, Ms. Redford, to finish her review of the Payara project. Others, who are experts in what is required for these kinds of reviews, are firm that it would take a minimum of 12 months to get a proper job done.

What could Ms. Redford and her team get done in 42 days? What quality of review could she and her people present to the Government of Guyana? What is it that she actually delivered to the government, and can it pass any type of reasonable muster by people who are expert in the oil business? Why is the PPP/C Government so determined to hide the Alison Redford Review of Payara from Guyanese? At the top of the list of worrying questions is why President Ali is so ferociously resistant to releasing the report of the work done by Ms. Redford and submitted to the PPP/C Government two years ago?

None of this makes any sense, not when the President himself is so fiercely insistent that his record has been all about transparency, and his actions prove so. Which record, and where is it, we respectfully ask the President? The record has been more about what is concealed, than what is revealed. As examples, there is the US$460M pre-contract audit report still shrouded in secrecy, the mining contracts that his Vice President promised repeatedly to have handed over, but has not, and it has been the same blanket of silence and secrecy relative to the 4^th (Yellowtail) oil project.

We ask again: What is there to hide? Why is there this fear over what was delivered, is contained in that Payara and other reports? There are others not visited today, but it is the same amazing scenario of the PPP/C Government and its leaders saying one thing, but doing the complete opposite too frequently for comfort. When leading politicians feel the need for, and commit to, this level of chronic secrecy in the governance of Guyana’s most precious assets, then only the worst can be concluded.

The history of this country has been a thick wall of secrecy. The discovery of oil, a whole new world for us, has resulted in even more impenetrable secrecy, multiple such layers. When each new review and report should be a learning experience for the Guyanese people, nothing of substance reaches them, so they continue to exist in a state of ignorance and impotence. This is on the greatest prize that Guyanese have been favoured with, this oil wealth of theirs.

Secrecy is not clean governance; it can never be. Secrecy cannot be of what is about principled leadership, no matter what any leader says. Only transparency is what represents clean governance and ethical leadership, and only when in its fullest flower. We wonder how long the government will continue with its charade about transparency, when the covert and covered-up is what Guyanese live with, has become the norm surrounding some of the most vital issues in today’s Guyana. It is our hope that President Ali would take note, and recognize how poorly both he and his government look when transparency is the issue in the spotlight.

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Transparency – PPP/C Government Style

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Transparency – PPP/C Government Style

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