AG Nandlall has to do more to clear the air

Sep 11, 2023 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Let us all stop playing with words, stop playing games, and stop playing the fool. Why is a law firm [once] associated with Hon Attorney General, Mohabir Anil Nandlall, SC, MP., involved in bidding for a government contract? There should be no such thing, and no matter what explanation the AG may come up with, doubts linger. It would be seen to be part of the ongoing farce that is claimed to be about clean governance and clean business in Guyana.

The AG should know better, and no matter how much distance he claims (which he has), there is a problem with this bid, a big one that is not going away. Even if his ostensibly former firm succeeds or fails in the bid. I have difficulty buying that bull about the AG no longer having any ties with the firm doing the bidding.

The optics are bad, and the AG should know this. The world simply does not work in smooth, clean, and clear lines as the AG would like us to believe. To give him his due, Mr. Nandlall is bright enough, and smooth enough, to have made sure that all the so-called trouble spots and loose ends are well taken of, so that nothing traces back to him. Sorry, sir, but the more this thing dangles before the Tender Board, and the public, the more it smells. It does not give off a pleasant odor to me.

Point blank: government ministers should not be bidding in any way (in any way) for public business. I don’t care how much the links may have been severed, or claimed to be severed. The perception is of cosmetics only. As a precedent that I was up in arms against, there was a PNC Minister, who had some business with a housing complex in Linden, and disgust and outrage flowed. My position then is my position now: these developments about recusals are a sham and a joke, a rank pretense.

It is what I say and insist would be the situation with this bid before the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB). So, when there is this lameness about links severed, I think that that is part of the charade, where the public is led to believe that the names mentioned are totally out, and have none of these kinds of interests.

Like I said earlier, yeah, and I am the King of England. The reality is that even if he really (really) did sever connections, and there is absolutely none whatsoever, this just does not register well.
Separately, there is a school of knowledge in this country of well-placed PPP functionaries at all levels, political and otherwise, who have these front companies and agencies that bid for various projects, and which fall under the Local Content umbrella. Only the dumbest and slowest of intellect is so negligent as to leave their fingerprints or any connecting thread that leads back to them. I am sitting here, and absorbing this, and what stirs is how PPP officials study the system before them, and look for ways to exploit (under clean cover) the barrage of business that is now part and parcel of life in Oil Guyana. Many politicians and well-placed public servants, along with well-connected party hacks, all position themselves (slickly) to grab a piece of the rich action for themselves.

This means that other citizens who have an interest in bidding for a public project or a piece of government work will almost always come out second best in the bidding, which would have been gamed from the start. To be specific, will the result of NPTAB’s evaluation and award process find a better bidder than the former friends and associates of the AG? Pardon me for being both skeptical and cynical, but I have to see that to believe that; or will accept that when pigs fly.

What I am saying directly and bluntly to AG Nandlall is that this looks terrible. It definitely reeks to the high heavens, no matter how well the tracks may have been covered. As for the group that supposedly do not have any business relationship anymore with the AG, is members should withdraw that bid, regardless of their right to compete and earn a living from opportunities that come about in today’s Guyana.

Thinking of all this, I cannot help but remember Thucydides that great Greek contributor to politics and the ways of life as lived by men in power. Thousands of years ago, he had this to say:
“With public life thrown into confusion, human nature, ever ready to rebel against the law, becomes the laws’ master, gladly showed itself to be powerless over passion…

For party factions do not meet to enjoy the benefits of existing law, but for the advantage of overthrowing them. and the confidence that held these factions was strengthened not by religious law but their complicity in crime….”

I look at Guyana today, and I point to it, with those fateful words, sentiments, and realities in mind. And further, I say not.

(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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• AG Nandlall, bid, Govt. contract, law firm, NPTAB

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