Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter from Mr David Patterson published in SN (‘There is no conflict of interest,’ 23.7.08) which is riddled with misinformation and I think that the record must be set straight.
First of all my letter was primarily written to set the record straight regarding a report in the newspaper which stated that Mr Patterson had brought to the attention of the Public Accounts Committee the fact that the new Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation was getting all of the business to supply the government with drugs since 2003 without having to go through a process of competitive bidding. I said that it was Mr Winston Murray who had brought this matter up and not Patterson as had been reported, and the verbatim account of the meeting would substantiate my charge.
Mr Patterson alleges that there is no Hansard for the standing committees and that the minutes will be there as evidence. All standing committees have minutes which only broadly outline the decisions taken at the meetings, but in addition there is a verbatim record of the meetings which I referred to as the Hansard, in which every word uttered by every member is recorded.
Unhappily Mr Patterson does not seem to understand these facts, even though he has been there for nearly two years.
As far as resuscitating my now defunct commentary programme is concerned, I don’t see how that is Patterson’s business but for the information of the public, I have no intention of doing so at this time, since unlike others I am not a hypocrite and it would be hypocritical to portray myself as an impartial analyst of matters mainly political whilst sitting on the opposition benches of the Parliament. The fact is that I voluntarily stopped my commentaries and despite pressure from numerous sources I have not decided to start them back.
I must now set the record straight and nail this myth that the AFC is making a difference in the Guyana Parliament.
From December 21, 2006 to December 18, 2007 I attended 19 Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meetings out of a total of 27. I was absent from one and was excused from 7. Mr Patterson was present at 18 of the 27 meetings was absent from 2 and was excused from 7. My attendance was therefore better than his.
Patterson has alleged that I have not been attending PAC meetings since October 2007, and this is untrue. I attended 5 meetings after the October break in 2007 until December 12, and was absent from only 1 meeting.
I am a member of the Economic Services Committee and became the chairman on rotation of that committee at the beginning of 2008. Being chairman of the Economic Services Committee is almost a full-time job in itself and out of a total of 29 meetings of that committee since the beginning of 2007, I was present at 26, was absent once and was excused twice; Mr Ramjattan, for example, was present at only 15 of the 29 meetings, was absent 12 times and was excused twice. In the six months since I have been chairman of the Economic Services Committee we (all the members of the Committee) have invited the Prime Minister to give evidence on GP&L which he did on June 4, 2008, and we invited GuySuCo to give evidence on the state of the sugar corporation which they did on the July 11, 2008, especially the Skeldon expansion project. So we have been very busy in that committee.
The PAC and the Ecomonic Services Committees meet almost every week, and frankly when my whip Mr Carberry asked me to sit on the select committee to redraft the Forestry Bill I explained to him that it would be impossible to sit on three committees which would occupy more than 10 hours every week (not counting the endless hours of research which must go into the preparation for each meeting). Let me clarify for those who do not know; it meant that if parliament was sitting I would have to be at meetings in parliament on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. This would be impossible given my other obligations, so I asked to be temporarily excused from the PAC, which was still looking at the audit for the year 2005, a historical excursion down memory lane at best, and opted to accept the select Forestry Committee task since I would have an opportunity to help make some changes to that bill which has been so controversial. It is legislation which is still to come and any input now by the opposition will be of great value, and that makes it very important to Guyana’s future. I have to say that Minister Robert Persaud has been heeding suggestions put forward by Mr Carberry and myself in this select committee, so we have been able to accomplish much.
To date we have had 11 Select Forestry Committee meetings. I was present at 7, was excused for being out of the country and being in hospital three times, and I was absent once.
Mr Ramjattan, the AFC representative, was present at only 5 of the meetings and was absent from 6.
But Mr Patterson says that I don’t go to meetings, which is total nonsense.
Yours faithfully,
Anthony Vieira MS, MP