PPP/C Executive Member and Campaign Representative Robert Persaud has denounced the opposition parties’ claims that the government and ruling party are facilitating corruption at various levels and charged that it was an attempt to create an atmosphere of insecurity.
In a statement on Monday, Persaud said that the advertisements and statements being made by APNU and AFC leaders on the political campaign are based on lies, rumours and misinformation and are intended to deflect from its accomplishments. “We all know that there are issues in terms of addressing corruption as you go to government services and so persons would complain but to suggest that at the executive level or state level there is this policy of encouraging corruption is a total and ridiculous fabrication,” he said, adding that instead of focusing on the issues that are important to the electorate, leaders from the said parties are making “a set of false claims.”
Persaud contends also that these claims are part of APNU and the AFC’s strategy to direct attention away from their own dearth of ideas and plans to chart the country into a bright future. “Yes, there are problems, we admit that and we have to strengthen that but to say that the executive at the state level has a policy to encourage [corruption], is ridiculous,” he said. According to Persaud, the two opposition parties have been having discussions and have “decided on a specific line, and the specific line is to go after the issue of security, and to create this false impression that we have a narco-state and the second line has been the issue of corruption to create this impression that Guyana is a corrupt society and that Government facilitates and encourages corruption.”
Persaud also took umbrage at APNU leader David Granger’s suggestion at a recent rally at Buxton that the government’s records are not being audited. He said when the PPP government took office there were no audited accounts as far back as seven to 10 years and it reinstated the Auditor General’s report and created an autonomous Auditor General’s Office that no longer presents that report to the Minister of Finance but to the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament. Persaud also said that the government reformed the Public Procurement Act enshrining conditions that do not exist in any other Act in this part of the world.
“If we were to look at the Integrity Commission, the PPP side is the only side in the National Assembly that provides returns to the Integrity Commission, the PNC and the AFC have refused to do so,” he said, adding that the party is challenging the Integrity Commission to file charges over these breaches. Further, he said the opposition parties have been reluctant to file their returns and “if people are going to speak of corruption and accountability and integrity they have to so demonstrate.”
Regarding the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, Persaud said the opposition continues to quote from it because its columnists and advocates, including Clive Thomas and Christopher Ram are engaged in these surveys. He said instead of focusing on the issues, the opposition parties “are running around on this bogey of corruption” when it cannot fault the PPP/C’s economic, housing, education and agriculture policies and the modernisation that has taken place countrywide. Persaud asserted that the opposition cannot find fault with “what the IMF has said; what the (World Bank) has said on the economy; what the IDB has said about the economy,” adding that just recently Republic Bank of Trinidad and Tobago declared that for them, Guyana is the best nation for investment and that they have been advising persons of that.
He then challenged the opposition to focus on the issues instead of “creating scandals and rumour-mongering.”
