Minister of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh has defended Government’s position on not supporting the Public Procurement Commission’s (PPC) establishment under the current legislation – the Procurement Act of 2003 – stating that an amendment made in 2003 to remove Government’s role upon the constitutional body’s establishment was done hurriedly and without careful analysis.
He was speaking at the PPP/C’s press conference held at Freedom House on Monday. He said that it would be untenable to expect Government to be responsible for executing projects and administering the country with the function in terms of procurement wrested from it.
Presidential Advisor on Governance Gail Teixeira had told Stabroek News in an interview last week that an amendment in 2003 to the 2003 Procurement Bill phasing out the role of Cabinet had not been approved by the then government and this was why a change to the Act was now being sought.
Teixeira made the surprise revelation when asked to defend the contradiction between the government’s position in 2003 and its recent announcement that it wanted to preserve a role for Cabinet in public procurement – 10 years after the Act had been signed into law.
Teixeira had told this newspaper that the Bill as originally written had been spawned out of discussions with the World Bank, IMF and other development partners. She said that in the midst of the debate there was a sidebar with the then Speaker [Ralph Ramkarran], the late Winston Murray of the PNCR and Attorney General Doodnauth Singh. Following this sidebar, the House approved an amendment, which would see Cabinet’s role in procurement vanishing with the coming into being of the PPC.
In a letter in the Stabroek News on Monday, former Speaker of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran rubbished Teixeira’s statements that he was one of the people involved in getting the vexing amendment into the Bill, calling her statements a departure from the truth.
When this newspaper sought a comment from Teixeira on Ramkarran’s article, she declined, saying that she did not wish to respond.
The original Bill had within it a clause which gave the Government a no objection power over all contracts above $16 million in value.
The amendment was moved by then Finance Minister Sais Kowlessar and sought to insert a new subsection to clause 54 in the Bill. That clause read: “Cabinet’s involvement under this section shall cease upon the constitution of the Public Procurement Com-mission.”
However, Dr. Singh was adamant that Cabinet’s role must be preserved in the procurement process.
“On the matter of the Public Procurement Commission, this issue has been debated and ventilated extensively,” said Dr. Singh. “And the Government’s position on this matter is quite simple, that you cannot exclude the executive from any participation in a process that you may want to turn around and hold the Executive responsible for,” he said.
“Procurement is a part of the execution of public expenditure…it is a part of execution of Government funded projects and is therefore a part of the body of public administration effort that you will want to hold the Government accountable for.
So you cannot in one breath want to hold the Government accountable for this public administration function but exclude the Government from any role in that function,” said the Minister.
“Once the Cabinet’s right of no-objection is preserved or restored in the legislation then we have absolutely no problem in proceeding immediately in doing all that we have to do in making sure that the PPC is appointed,” he said. “I don’t think that this is a difficult position to understand,” he said.
“I believe it goes without saying that with responsibility must come authority. You can’t hold an entity responsible for an outcome over which they hold absolutely no responsibility and into which they provide no input,” said Dr. Singh.
He said that while he was not an MP at the time or present at the sitting, “what appears to have happened at the time on the floor is that certain issues were raised, the Opposition was at the time expressing concern and lack of support for the legislation, and on the floor at the time at the spur of the moment, the proposal was put to remove Cabinet’s right of no-objection and it was carried at the course of the sitting the very night.”
“Whether it was for the purposes of achieving some degree of unanimity on this legislation, the fact of the matter is that this amendment originated that very night in Parliament. Its genesis was spontaneous, considered within a small time between one or two Members of Parliament and agreed to and incorporated into the Bill,” he said in defence of Government’s position. “Whether it benefitted from the most careful examination and consideration is a different matter and one that I would not want to speculate on,” he said.
“But with the passage of time and more careful consideration of the implications of this legislation what has become clear to us now is that you would be placing the Executive branch of Government in an invidious position were you to say you the Cabinet still have responsibility for public administration and execution or projects and of favourable outcome of those projects but you have no role to play or involvement whatsoever within the gamut of public administration,” he said.
“Whatever the consideration might have been during that moment of spontaneity when this amendment was conceptualised, analysed and passed, time and more careful consideration informed us that we would be placing the Cabinet in an invidious position,” he said.
Also speaking at the press conference, Zulficar Mustapha said that at the time the Government MPs took a unanimous decision to vote on the amendment. However, he noted that in hindsight, the amendment was not analysed to gauge what its repercussions would have been.
