On Monday last, the first day of the 2011 budget debates, Alliance For Change Chairman, Mr Khemraj Ramjattan MP, provoked a strident outburst in Parliament when he referred to a lack of transparency and accountability by the government and drew a parallel between that and Minister of Housing Mr Irfaan Ali being hauled before the House Privileges Committee last year over a $4 billion supplementary allocation for work in the housing sector that was sought in 2010, after it would have been already spent the previous year.
So raucous were the cries of the government MPs in defence of their colleague that Speaker of the House Mr Ralph Ramkarran was forced to suspend the sitting for some 15 minutes. What may have incensed those occupying the government benches even more, was the fact that Mr Ramjattan took to the House and read from, Improving Public Accountability: The Guyana Experience 1985 – 2007, a book by former Auditor General Mr Anand Goolsarran, whose rows with government officials over their constant deviation from standard and acceptable accounting practices were common knowledge.
Mr Goolsarran’s annual reports on the audits of government accounts complete with recommendations were refreshingly straightforward and often highly anticipated by citizens who opposed underhand business. But it was his public, often scathing, commentary of the way the country’s accountability was being handled that rankled, apparently. It may be recalled that it was under Mr Goolsarran’s watch that the misappropriation of some US$2.5 million in the sale of Guyana’s gold overseas through the manipulation of the daily spot rate was unearthed. And who can forget the $50 million Wildlife Department fraud or the illegal sale of dolphins by a government functionary.
Mr Goolsarran’s methods were – to put it mildly – unappreciated; he found himself out in the cold, so to speak, and subsequently accepted employment with the United Nations as executive secretary to the UN Board of Auditors. Today, five years after Mr Goolsarran’s departure from the Guyana Public Service government agencies still deviate from the accounting norms built into the system that would ensure accountability; not much has changed.
What is a pity is that the government ministers and their colleagues in Parliament don’t seem to take the same approach to the workings of their respective ministries and agencies. We don’t hear them shouting and screaming when frauds are unearthed or when the Public Accounts Committee questions an untendered contract that may be kosher but could very well have not been. Instead, they or their permanent secretaries or other accounting officers go quietly before the committee and defend what is clearly inexcusable.
In October last year, Transparency International (TI) published its annual corruption index which gave Guyana a rating of 2.7, with 10 being very clean and 0 being highly corrupt; Guyana was also ranked at 116 out of 178 countries. At the time the administration had also slammed the TI report, calling it suspect and trying to deride its sources which included the Economist
Intelligence Unit, the World Bank and Freedom House – an internationally renowned NGO based in Washington DC, which is an advocate for political freedom, democracy and human rights. As TI had stated in its report, which gleans data from over a dozen sources, “with governments committing huge sums to tackle the world’s most pressing problems, from the instability of financial markets to climate change and poverty, corruption remains an obstacle to achieving much needed progress.”
The PPP administration should know that it ought to be doing much more than stamping and screaming in Parliament like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum to reduce and remove not just corruption but any perception that it exists, to ensure that true progress and development are underway in this country.
