H@RD TRUTHS BY GHK LALL – Commission of Inquiry versus Independent Investigations

Jan 26, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Whenever there is a development of great sensitivity or heavy controversy in Guyana, the calls are immediate and many for a Commission of Inquiry (COI).  From Linden to Mahdia, and going beyond arson and assassinations, the thinking and press by Guyanese have been for COIs.  A COI involving the right people, functioning with an open-ended mandate, and lacking in interference, or even a whiff of untoward influence, has its benefits, possesses merits. Contrastingly, what Guyanese have received for COIs have been mainly sham and spectacle.

Doing something for the sake of doing something.  Get it done for the record and reference.  Meanwhile deep skepticism reigns that the COI for this condition, or that tragedy, lacks either depth or genuineness.

The composition of any given COI is the first giveaway.  For the most part, the names and selections are of people who do not inspire the greatest confidence.  Credibility is questioned quietly in some corners, sometimes many, particularly by those who know them.  Their commitment to getting to the bottom of whatever is being reviewed for real substances can be questioned.  Then, there is that indicator that does not fail: their long connection to one government or another, their mutually rewarding relationship with one leader or the other.  One of the standing practices in this society is to select the leader for a COI from friendly quarters.  That is, someone who can be depended upon to deliver what is expected.  What local politicians of exceptional craftiness expect more often than not falters before what does justice to the challenge at hand, what is in the best interests of the people.  But Guyanese do have these cherished COIs, and whatever the issue-crime, crisis, or catastrophe-at hand, simply fade away.

The government of the moment is pleased with itself to assert that there was a COI, and it has delivered.  What else is there to harp and carp about?  Meanwhile, in the realm of thinking and conscientious Guyanese- a shrinking presence-there is the sticky sense that cannot be shed that something is amiss, that all is not alright, and that matters were cleverly smoothed over, or even that some fix was part of the process, and the resulting product (report).  The latter usually triggers a new series of clamors and controversies.  But who cares about means and methods, a COI was called for and completed, wasn’t it?  So, what’s the problem now? This is the unsettled territory that has been inseparable from most COIs that had been given life.  To maintain a neutral and general context, I do not pinpoint any one COI, except to say this to citizens: take a closer look at those in the last couple of decades, and they have generated more questions than answers, more disturbances than calm, and renewed controversy over what should have been finalized, and put to rest, but was not.  To sum this up differently, I discern that if Guyanese had their way, there would be a COI of completed COIs, to prove that what was delivered is only half of the story, and a skewed one at that, in the minds of those who still think freely and cleanly here.

Weighing all this, I am thinking that we need a better arrangement, apparatus, to probe our issues that roil and trouble deeply.  If only for the confidence that it gives.  In America, there is a creature called an Independent Counsel, as underwritten by the law of the land.  There is a powerful need for such a presence in Guyana.  A man or woman who is named, and who assembles his own team.  As in Watergate and Clinton-gate, great pains were gone to by the Attorney General and Justice Department to identify a citizen of impeccable reputation, one saturated with integrity and credibility across the board. The person has always been someone known to have strong ties to the other, adversarial, political side.  The mere mention of such a consideration is tantamount to a sacrilege, if not crime, in Guyana.

I persevere. The Independent Counsel has an unlimited budget, works with an open-ended scope (Terms of Reference), freely gathers his group, and is not answerable to the president, or attorney general, or anyone.  Simply putting something of this nature into the public domain could be enough to get me the gas chamber.  There, I still place it firmly, but insistently, before all Guyanese, none more than the clean thinking ones, meaning, the hoped-for objective, non-partisan ones. The first concern is whether there is the principle and the guts to consider something like this.  The second is whether there would be the will and leadership vitality to put something along the lines of an Independent Counsel into action here.  For whatever it is worth, my recommendation is that we should do so in dispute-riddled Guyana.  It is time that an effort is made to overcome the charges of ‘whitewash’ and ‘coverup’ and what I would label a fool’s errand.  I readily admit to a glaring deficiency in any such Independent Counsel/Investigator mechanism.  Who is there in Guyana from the other side that a PPP or PNC government and leadership would put so much in their hands?  What could expose and maul?  For most issues and developments of national significance, there is running to foreign shores and their citizens.  That alone should emphasize where and how things stand here on the matters that drain and drag down and degrade Guyana.

(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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• Commission of Inquiry, GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, Independent Investigations, interference

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