With each passing week, the Jagdeo administration continues to lower the bar as it relates to ethics in government business and standards in public life.
Nowhere was this starker than the case of the mining deal which Presidential Advisor on Empowerment, Mr Odinga Lumumba managed to strike.
The upshot of the deal is that Mr Lumumba and his business partner Mr Grantley Walrond importuned the President to grant them a mining licence for a potentially gold-rich property along the Mariwa River. Mr Lumumba’s McNeal Enterprises had been awarded a prospecting licence for this area since 1991 but a subsequent exploration agreement on the property with Mr Walrond’s Roraima Mining Company (RMC) failed to yield results and unpaid rentals led to a revocation of the permit. The property was then auctioned to Messrs Alphonso and Baboolall for $80M but this deal was challenged by RMC and never went through. It was in this state that Messrs Lumumba and Walrond subsequently petitioned the President last year for a mining permit and this was duly approved by President Jagdeo.
First, it is unseemly and unethical for a presidential advisor on empowerment to be petitioning the same person he works with for consideration in a business venture. Moreover, one would have thought that both the President and Mr Lumumba would have been acutely aware of this unacceptable intersection in light of the latter’s previous infamous transgression in the export of dolphins. Mr Lumumba was not a licensed exporter of wildlife but nonetheless was able to achieve this feat while being an advisor to the President. Mr Lumumba got off lightly and made a public apology but it seems that he did not take the lesson from that glaring transgression to heart.
Second, and perhaps most importantly, President Jagdeo has no locus standi in this matter. Approvals of mining permits should be completely within the purview of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) as per the mining and GGMC acts. That Messrs Lumumba and Walrond felt it necessary to appeal directly to the President indicates that they may have experienced difficulty in securing approval from the GGMC via the established procedures. This is all the more reason why President Jagdeo should not have intervened at all. If indeed, the GGMC was balking at making the decision, President Jagdeo by virtue of his intervention has subverted the authority of the GGMC. He has also paved the way for others to try their hand at approaching him. This undermining of the authority of statutory bodies has been a recurring feature of the last decade of PPP/Civic governance and has entrenched the lack of respect for order in doing things and, indeed, respect for law and order. President Jagdeo must explain whence he derived authority to approve a mining permit for his presidential advisor and ultimately this deal must be cancelled and reverted to the GGMC.
Third, as a Member of Parliament for the ruling benches, the Integrity Commission Act and the standards it espouses should exclude Mr Lumumba from benefiting from a mining deal which was concluded on the basis of a petition to the President whose actions are not subject to legal or parliamentary review.
Fourth, being knowledgeable of the work of the Standing Committee of Parliament on Natural Resources and of deliberations at Cabinet sub-committees by virtue of his presence in the Office of the President, Mr Lumumba should have been precluded from pursuing much less concluding any such deal.
Fifth, the intended sale of the property days later to the Canadian company Shoreham for US$1m calls into question the whole basis of the original deal. Was it truly about an indigenous role in a mining project or seeking lucrative profits by instantly vending the property?
Sixth, the proposed sale of exploration data to Shoreham for US$250,000 when that data remains the property of the GGMC and is usually freely transmitted to the legitimate holder of the claim is disturbing.
Seventh, the property has been within the control of Messrs Lumumba and Walrond for 18 years – far in excess of the total period usually allotted to stakeholders to produce results. Why has this been tolerated by the GGMC? For all these reasons and more the deal should be immediately rescinded.
Government’s MOU with the Kingdom of Norway for the US$250M forest protection deal places great stock on transparency and fairness in extractive industries. This deal would fall afoul of these rules right away.
The government has however had a twin-track approach to these matters. Its friends get the type of treatment they desire while those who are not favoured feel the full and punctilious measure of crawling bureaucracy, rules and regulations.
How else does one reconcile this deal Mr Lumumba has managed to secure with the stringent and draconian rules that have been dangled over the heads of small and medium-scale miners?
The gymnastic routine that would allow the government to explain away this deal defies imagination and would have to be of perfect Olympian proportions.
Mr Lumumba should have already departed the Office of the President over the dolphin fiasco. It goes without saying that this deal is the cinch. But what about President Jagdeo’s role? What will convince him to alter his exuberance for these reckless, groundless decisions?
