Auditor General: what happened to his cannons

Feb 24, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

(Kaieteur News) – The name of Guyana’s auditor general (AG) is circulating in the air. It is my tough duty to inform that neither the news nor the air is of the refreshing variety. The AG has asked for a two-year extension in that same role. It is my harder job to deliver news to him that could cause him some problems with his balance. He should go.

I believe that the AG is a fine gentleman, a decent fellow. His options limit him to one move. Do the decent thing and go. On his own feet and strength. Not operating near political manipulations. Not participating in any schemes. Not one more in Guyana’s long line of charlatans in official capacities. The 2-year extension that he has requested, he should let that go. Go, Mr. AG. Rethink that request, rescind it, retreat gracefully into the sunset. Why should he pay any attention to the likes of me? Why should he hold close to his heart what I recommend, and take one last look and that long walk out the gates of the Audit Office?

The Audit Office is a shadow, a slider, and shaker of Guyanese confidence; trust in what should be a fiercely independent watchdog. One with bark and some functioning teeth to match. Painfully, the Audit Office, with the AG at the helm, has seemingly shied away from confronting the areas where burglars congregate, and where the people’s safes are ransacked. There is putting as much distance as there could be between the audit office and where there’s expansive potential for creative skullduggeries. In thinking of how restrained the AG has been, I see him in the outlines and nifty management of his time and focus, in the manner of a local driver. His official travels lead him to drive along one of those new highways that the PPP Govt has put up for billions (properly audited, I guess [I hope]), so that he avoids the noise and murk and mess of the craven and corrupt capital city. From where most of the big money action tracks and leads, Guyana’s Audit Office is conspicuously standoffish, its potency sluggish.

Why is it that a citizen without stature, one with a soft voice, should have to tell the AG how to do his job? He does not know where to look, how deeply? He should have some idea of what makes Guyana tick, what makes PPP Govt operators jump for joy, and what makes transparency and accountability such a bucket without a bottom in this country, and with holes drilled in the cylinder to complete the picture. Since I have to hold the AG’s hand, I walk him across the street, and deposit him in three places. Cost-of-living billions. Contract employment dollars. Community policing stipends. The blasted PPP thieves are so damn greedy that even de li’l couple thousand dallaz for dem pore community watchmaan, dem play games with, denying some their due, while helping themselves to what’s left. If PPP Govt cronies can take aim at the equivalent of petty cash money, where will they not put their sticky paws to grab the billions?

In this country, wherever there are loads of cash, there’s certainty that a big band of government self-enrichers are around to do justice to that kind of free money. It would help if the AG would break his silence and clear the air. Why is it that he gives the widest berth to where ‘hot’ money burns a hole in people’s heads? He cannot be that afraid! If the AG needs an opportunity to prove his independence, the width of his scope, the extent of his probity, then all those slush funds and their billions stare at him, as if taunting targets. C’mon, try me (cost-of-living big ones set aside). Go ahead, take a swing at me (contract employment shenanigans).

I think that the AG can do better, is better than he has made himself be. He has had the budgets. He has the tools. Oh, one more thing: he has an angel sitting on his shoulder and whispering in his ear. Beware, danger! Don’t go there. Control self. Manage professional instincts. If for one reason only, I would urge the AG to hit the road, it’s so all Guyanese get to see who his successor would be. O, what a tangled web….

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

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Anil Nandlall, Auditor General, cannons, GHK Lall

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