The parliamentary examination of the amendments to the anti-money laundering laws resumed yesterday, but government’s hopes for passage ahead of an international review of the country’s progress have been dashed as the select committee will not meet again until June 12.
The special select committee reviewing the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (Amendment) Bill has set its next meeting for June 12, long past the administration’s desired timetable for passage in the National Assembly.
From May 27 to May 30, during the 37th Plenary meeting of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) in Nicaragua, Guyana and other countries will appear before the body’s review group, the Inter-national Cooperation Review Group (ICRG), for them to determine progress made on the implementation of recommendations which had been made by the international Financial Action Task Force.
However, government, which tabled the amendment bill on April 22 despite having almost a year to make the changes, failed to convince both main opposition APNU and the AFC despite warnings about possible sanctions.
APNU, which had withdrawn from the work of the select committee over the failure of President Donald Ramotar to share a correspondence that CFATF advised be circulated to all stakeholders, including the opposition, yesterday re-engaged government and the AFC in the parliamentary review.
APNU MP Deborah Backer yesterday said that the committee met yesterday morning, but explained that much work was not done.
Backer said that fellow APNU MPs Basil Williams, Joseph Harmon, and Carl Greenidge, AFC MP Khemraj Ramjattan and PPP/C MP Gail Teixeira, who functions as the committee’s chair, were also present.
With Finance Minister Ashni Singh out of the country and the two other PPP/C representatives, Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee and Legal Affairs Minster Anil Nandlall, absent, Teixeira was left to represent the government’s position alone.
Backer said that though the APNU MPs turned up to the meeting, some of them had to be excused. She said that Williams and Harmon, owing to obligations as legal practitioners, had to be excused from the meetings to tend to other business.
“Meeting at that time was very inconvenient since many of us are part-time parliamentarians and have other responsibilities,” she explained.
Without getting much done, Backer said that the meeting soon drew to a close and she added that a decision was taken for them to meet again on the afternoon of June 12.
Despite government’s push for the swift passage of the bill, including a direct appeal to parliamentarians by Ramotar, the AFC has maintained that it would not support the bill unless the president reconsidered his recent veto of two opposition bills and government lists its nominees for the Public Procurement Committee (PPC).
During a press conference yesterday, Ramjattan reiterated the party’s position, stating that while the AFC intends to participate in the review of the bill in the special select committee, it would vote no to the bill once returned to the House if its demands were not met.
Notwithstanding APNU’s decision to return to the special select committee, APNU leader David Granger has said that the coalition would not be coerced into a speedy consideration of the bill since it wanted to ensure that a proper bill emerged from the process.
“It will be brought before the assembly when the select committee has completed its deliberations. We will not be rushed,” he said.
