Dear Editor,
Former President Bharrat Jagdeo is reported in your newspaper as having “urged a review” of the CJIA contract awarded to a Chinese firm that is found linked by filiation to a holding involved in corrupting government officials in other countries.
Mr Jagdeo has not joined the “naysayers” he once excoriated. But he is breaking the leaden silence in which he is shrouded since his departure from the executive. And he is doing so in circumstances that are certain to cloud the project in an aura of suspicion if ever it gets done by the builders and financiers involved.
Some months ago I wrote that the project was over-priced, in my estimation, to the point that incompetence or malfeasance or both may reasonably be supposed. The call by Mr Jagdeo, at this stage, does not lift the cloud. A contract was awarded. If it were the case that “commissions” or other illegal inducements were featured they would already have been paid in part or whole. Throwing out the Chinese is possible only to the extent that the Memorandum of Understanding or preliminary agreement or contractual conditions permit annulment on the grounds of inadequate disclosure by the awardee. And re-opening the bidding process may simply furnish us the facility of a fresh face and perhaps a fresh round of commissions.
In my previous comments on the subject I had mentioned the case of the Trinidad airport project, the obvious cost fattening that we had noted, and the criminal charges and convictions that would follow. The CJIA project cannot be given carte blanche until a full technical and cost review is concluded. And this would be in addition to the unspecified “review” that Mr Jagdeo demands.
In this type of project the illegal payments are embedded in a manner that is difficult to detect simply by reading the lines of the pro forma cost estimates. Some idea of actual material and equipment costs needs to be available to the review team. And, as important, notions of comparable costs for projects of similar nature and scale in similar conditions.
The opposition parties have, themselves, to equip the parliament and select committees with the competence to be able to regard and review this type of project. It is disturbing to read that Mr Granger remarks that the office of Leader of the Opposition is still to be properly established. Normally the opposition leader needs legal and technical staff at his disposal.
It is how it is done in the USA and countries serious about managing the people’s business. To the extent that is possible, budgetary endowments to fund these functions should be made available. The opposition parties in parliament have taken a principled position in favour of full disclosure. But they must be in a position to evaluate the data and evidence that is disclosed.
And, urgently, a word to Dr Luncheon, Mr Samuel Hinds and the others thundering in self-righteous comedy in parliament and press conference. Save us the embarrassment of the negative reports by Transparency International and other corruption watchdogs. What observers are expecting is the normal levels of probity and a normal level of accountability.
Save us the swill of exhausted rhetoric about PNC days and start operating as a normal government with nothing to hide. Hold yourselves and the nation to higher standards.
We do not believe the government to be totally corrupt in all its parts nor do we hold to the view that its officials are all without scruple.
The Guyana government, compared with officialdom in Spain or the Congo, is sane, and only perhaps peopled with a minority of minor players on the global corruption index. Runnings there must have been and will be. So the PPP has to reconcile itself to the fact that it has public perception against it and that it owes it to itself and supporters/sympathisers to gather the moral and political will to rise above the cupidity of the few.
The standards that impose the spectacle of the policeman or small public servant or customs official taking a bribe are the marks of a fallen people. And once this vice installs itself as habit, it is difficult for a nation to recover its moral health.
It would have been 1998, I recall, in an African nation where the airport had been damaged due to war, that as part of a group invited to do the reconstruction I discussed the financing with the president’s nephew, cunningly placed at the head of the unit handling “grands projets d’infrastructure.” The country was vast, with seven minor airports and fields that the Africans wanted done as part of a package to improve interior communications. The engineering company with whom we were associated, estimated perhaps 110 million dollars and two to three years of work. We met the nephew at dinner in his compound to look at the estimate.
He told us, nonchalantly, that the ruling party would be taking twenty per cent of the total project cost as commission that would be used for the war chest, certain charitable work they had long dreamt of and promised to accomplish, and for building a small airport in the president’s village, from which he, I suppose, could be expected to flee when his turn came.
I objected that this would be illegal, unconscionable and impossible to dissimulate in the final accounts. There was amusement all around as I spoke. I was later assured by the engineers that this was standard procedure in some parts of Africa and the Third World. They ask for twenty and settle for five – or sometimes nothing at all. But it is considered good diplomacy to pretend to take them seriously. It is a universe in which strange rules apply.
In a Caribbean island we had another type of experience with a government later lost in a mist of accusation about corruption. It started with the fact that the Minister of Works owned the biggest building materials firm in the country. He would be offered, it was understood, the sub-contract to supply stone, cement and whatever it was we needed. We would be sure to win the bidding process. It never got to the stage of discussing costs. They lacked the technical resources to really comprehend the requirements of the project and its cost for future generations. But this was not their concern. They would sign on the spot given a chance.
I stated in my previous letter that questions arise about the capabilities of our own government. The over-priced Marriott hotel scheme is another case. One could buy, in a developed country, a flagged (branded) hotel of the same sort with sound financials and an established business for less. It is sufficient to acquaint oneself with costs for similar works, once the parameters are defined, to understand that we will not be getting the best deal. A five star hotel with a major brand is available with 700 rooms in a big city, with a guaranteed revenue stream, for ten million and the assumption of the debt. Deals are rationally analysed and costed in the real world. The government, through its investment arm, can do better with $50 million or build the hotel for less than the almost $250,000 per room we will pay.
In terms of the airport project, I had mentioned that Belize had its runway re-done and extended and equipped for US$4.5 million or so by a Kuwaiti company. And since urging is now à la mode, I instantly urge that the government expose to the public the extent and justification of the works envisaged for CJIA and others. The opposition is likewise urged to gather to itself the competencies needed to make a meaningful analysis of the projects.
Hollow objections do not suffice. Both sides need to comprehend that we cannot be expected, as citizens, to endorse a project cooked and fashioned under a low bottom house in the dark. The bids have to be re-opened and a competent and experienced team engaged to manage the process.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
