H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – Sack the PAC

Mar 17, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Like a finely tuned Swiss watch, the bell rings, and PPP men and women jump to stations, follow their prearranged cues, obey their standing orders.  Whatever is engaging them, even if nothing, do not show at the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting(s).  They ensure that their cover stories are in place.

Thank God that there are those in the PPP Government to set the best example for us in standing to attention, and following orders to the tee.  Like an answering machine, the reality of PAC gatherings is this: ‘sorry we are not available to….’  Relative to PAC assemblies, I translate for fellow citizens: sorry, we are not available to attend.  I ask to be excused for inserting ‘sorry’ since this is largely unknown throughout Guyana, with the swaggering PPP leading the way in this department.  It is why we have so much disdain on the roads, so much that is dangerous in schools, so much that is wrong in daily Guyanese life.  The nastiness cascades from the head down to the toe.

The PAC failing to meet because of a political maneuver designed for precisely such an outcome stands as a clear example of what is at work, was the objective all along.  The Parliamentary Affairs diva should be rightfully proud of her government’s machinations. The record is now of 10 PAC meetings since that crafty quorum change and it reveals so much of what is the lengthy, slimy underbelly of governance in Guyana, PPP style.  Government leaders all sing symphonies when billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money are set aside to be spent for this or that project, some of them riddled with questions, suspicions, and corruptions.  Every place they go, every media space and moment, is used to emphasize what is being done, and how much good is being done for the Guyanese people in the regions.  Their sweet songs have the same title: See what we are doing for you….  See how true we are to Guyanese….

On the other hand, when there has to be some limited (only a little) oversight of how those same billions were spent, if they were spent at all, who received, and how many projects got shortchanged, then it is a different song from the PPP Government: ‘You don’t want to know…  we don’t want you to know….’  And, there is no way that that would be allowed to happen.  Thus, the efforts of the PAC come to a screeching, grinding halt.  It is why I say: Give the PAC the sack.  Isn’t it time to put a stop to this charade about checks and balances and oversight and good governance?  Sack the PAC instead of putting it on this tortured rack for stoning, drawing, quartering, burning, reducing to ashes.  I point my fellow Guyanese and insist that this is precisely what is happening with the work of the PAC, and taxpayers’ dollars doing down the drain.  Apologies, for getting that one wrong.  It is more accurate to say the taxpayers’ dollars going down into the pockets of the interlocking PPP cabals.

It is at times like these that I marvel that His Excellency, President Ali, could have this grim and groaning style to talk about how much he and his government are about transparency and accountability.  The mere utterance of those words from him is a distortion, what disfigures this country, reduces it to a running joke.  It is what reduces the President himself into a sickly shadow: a man who struggles for authenticity, someone who does not care about how he hurts his own image.  I want to see my President register as a figure of respect, of standing and truth, and not some figure to be shredded because of how his words do not reconcile with the actions of his government and officials.  I want this for my President, and all should remember that I didn’t vote for him.

Why do matters have to be so with the PAC, this vital little checkpoint to determine if and how the billions were spent?  Why are these PPPPAC schemes needed? Why these quorum re-arrangements to stop it dead in its tracks when meetings are involved?  And 10 of them since?  The PAC is there to interrogate on how the billions are spent, no matter how superficially.

Yet, it can’t move off the ground from where it is stuck because of constant PPP machinations and manipulations.  The Government is good at making speeches about the purity of its leadership and their activities, but when its own glaring follow-up actions sabotage clean governance, then we don’t have a trusted government with leaders to match, but a ghetto of perversity, with that kind of leadership in front.  This is where the PAC stands today, why not put the darned thing out of its miserable, meaningless existence?  Take it outside of parliament and have the garbage truck collect it.  Just shoot it first.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• billions, GHK Lall, Government, Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC), PPP

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