Political analyst Henry Jeffrey has rapped the Private Sector Commission (PSC) over its petition to Parliament on the anti-money laundering bill and argued that its tendency to support the government will continue until constitutional and other arrangements are in place to allow it independent action.
In a column in Tuesday’s Stabroek News entitled `Private Sector Commission needs regime change’ Jeffrey argued that the PSC was caught in the grasp of an entrenched government with inflexible positions similar to its counterpart during the PNC era.
“Undoubtedly, there are some PPP/C acolytes in the PSC and it is also true that the organisation should be able to still find some room to manoeuvre more equitably in this new dispensation. But what we are also witnessing is a situation not dissimilar to that which occurred under the PNC: business people caught in a hard place when political regimes are entrenched and unchangeable over long periods of time”, he said.
He said that even if the PSC managed to become more balanced in its approach, its tendency to support the regime will persist “until we have in place political constitutional arrangements that give such organisations greater room for independent action. Indeed, the problem will only be finally solved when regime change becomes normal.”
His discussion of the PSC came amid its stance on the anti-money laundering bill and its decision to have a government MP present a petition to Parliament calling for the controversial legislation to be expedited. The opposition voted against the reading of the petition – citing falsities in it – and was later condemned for this by the private sector.
Jeffrey, a former long-serving PPP/C minister, related an anecdote from the 1992 elections campaign in Bartica. He said that a well-known and important Indo-Guyanese businessman who had previously supported the PNC wanted to speak on the PPP/C platform and he (Jeffrey) had asked then PPP leader Dr Cheddi Jagan about this. Dr Jagan had said no at first to the appearance of the businessman on the platform but on further discussion with Jeffrey agreed to it.
He said that once on the PPP/C platform, the erstwhile supporter of then President Desmond Hoyte declared the PPP/C was the best thing for Guyana and Jagan the” best thing since sliced bread. Jagan was Mahatma Gandhi come to save Guyana, etc, etc!”
He said this incident came to mind as the PSC was attempting to have its petition deliberated on by parliament last Thursday.
“There is no hiding that – not unlike how the PPP and its supporters viewed big business relations with the PNC during the latter’s time in office – the PSC and many of its sectoral members are viewed by the opposition and its supporters as being at the beck and call of the regime to rubber stamp government policies the opposition believes questionable”, Jeffrey asserted.
He then queried why the continuation of the almost “sycophantic” ties between the various governments and the private sector..
Jeffrey said that after the Bartica public meeting Jagan explained to him his initial opposition to the businessman. Jagan contended that everyone had the democratic right to choose whom to support but his quarrel with the businessman was that he had gone beyond the support required of him by Forbes Burnham and had hurt a lot of PPP supporters. As an aside, Jeffrey said that after the PPP/C won the election, “a retinue of private sector moguls came parading to Jagan’s office to beg pardon in some of the most shameless ways!”
Jeffrey said he agreed with Jagan that no one should have to show allegiance to a political party/government beyond what is normal. However, he noted that that was essentially a theoretical position that did not cater “for the structural difficulty that exists when political regimes are entrenched in office. In these kinds of circumstances what is normal and required has to be based on individual judgment, which at the very least has to take into consideration the nature of the given government, including how liberal it is, how much one has to lose if it withdraws it support and how entrenched it appears to be, i.e. how long in one’s assessment it is likely to last. It is extremely difficult for the private sector to act independently when it is caught in autocratic never changing political conditions. The entrenched PNC regime had demonstrated its propensities by nationalising some 80% of the private sector.“
Jeffrey, who also had a close association with the PNC prior to joining with the PPP/C said that over the years, the PSC has supported the PPP/C government “in most if not all of its important quarrels with the opposition, most recently over the Marriott, Amaila and airport projects. In attempting to use its influence in the anti-money laundering parliamentary process, the Commission sought to get the opposition to pass a Bill the latter believed was defective rather than for example calling on the regime to return the Bill to the committee from which it had been so unceremoniously removed.”
Even when the PSC discerned that a major problem existed, Jeffrey said it had sought to make allowance for the “extremely questionable positions of the government.”
He adverted to the 2012 Transparency International Corruption Index which Guyana had performed very poorly on, and contended that the PSC had sought, “in its usual blustering manner, to question the methodology of TI rather than using the occasion to introduce policies to try to rectify the situation.”
According to Jeffrey, once the current government had a majority in parliament, the PSC only needed to show perfunctory respect to the opposition, but “just as it is now calling on the government and opposition to adjust to the new realities, it also needs to change if it wishes to build the capacity to influence what is taking place in parliament.”
