The political contortions in relation to the failure to pass the Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (Amendment) Bill have left the public in a state of bewilderment. The whole sorry tale is symbolic of the canker at the heart of the nation’s politics today. All the political parties, it would seem, agree in principle, at least, that the country needs an anti-money laundering act, and all of them are fully conscious of the fact that there is a deadline to meet for the passage of the bill if the country is not to invite serious consequences. But somewhere between the acknowledgement of a need and the apprehension of a deadline, the old political troupers went into gambling mode and started behaving as if they were in a high-stakes poker game.
The moves which have been part of this game have been on the whole too wearisome to hold the attention of the general public, but in bare outline at the beginning of last week it looked as though we had just repeated the sequence of moves which had been played out last year, and which had ended in the bill being voted down by the opposition in the National Assembly on November 7. Prior to this fiasco, the bill had gone for consideration to a parliamentary special select committee, but Ms Gail Teixeira, the Chairperson of that committee and the government’s Chief Whip had moved to close off the discussions, a decision which had led to the failure to secure passage of the proposed legislation in parliament.
This year, the government was the beneficiary of an infusion of common sense, and agreed to take the bill back to select committee. Thereafter, however, we were back to the old game, with Ms Teixeira once again moving to bring the deliberations to a close in the absence of the opposition. The latter had walked out of the committee on Monday after the government had insisted on having members of the Private Sector Commission attend all the sittings, and no opposition member was present on the following day when the Chairperson moved to complete the consideration of the bill.
The PSC took APNU to task for the walk-out, although given the situation and the fact that in the past it has been seen almost as an arm of government, it should not have been trying at that stage to become an observer to all the sittings, more especially since the committee had already agreed that it could be invited to attend as the need arose. It was not necessary for it to try and insert itself directly and add fuel for further rancour; that was a misjudgement on its part. Its written statement issued in conjunction with the Transparency Institute of Guyana Inc subsequent to that, was unquestionably the preferred way for it to go.
Equally unhelpful was PPP General Secretary Clement Rohee’s impetuous outburst that the opposition parties were withholding support for the anti-money laundering bill in order to protect drug lords and money launderers. Fortunately, this does not appear to have done too much damage, if only because it was a patently ludicrous statement in a context where the government had been given three years of warnings from the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force about the need for legislation, and had done nothing. In 2011, in particular, it had commanded an indisputable majority in the National Assembly, and had not tabled a bill. For its part APNU was not slow to retort that (among other things) since 2000 when the Money Laundering Prevention Act was passed, no arrest had been made and no assets of drug lords or money launderers had been seized, while the Financial Intelligence Unit had failed to conduct any investigations leading to arrest.
Ms Teixeira, it seems, had an eye to the Financial Action Task Force deadline, since they are due to meet and consider Guyana’s case on February 13. If the FATF is not satisfied, then this country will face blacklisting, with all its attendant financial and other implications. The government plan, therefore, is to have the bill passed by the National Assembly tomorrow, February 10, so the deadline can be met. It seems, however, that the government side recognized that in the circumstances there was every expectation the bill would meet the same fate as in 2013, so they therefore once again changed tactics, and after some negotiation agreed to return yet again to the special select committee. In order to accommodate APNU, whose point man on the bill Mr Carl Greenidge, it was reported, was out of the country until Friday night along with another committee member, sittings were to be held yesterday and today.
At the time of writing it was not known whether any progress had been made or not, but this time round it has to be said that the fate of the bill lies primarily in the opposition’s hands. It is in jeopardy on two counts: firstly, if the amendments APNU wants are not incorporated, and secondly, if the opposition holds to its vague threat to insist that the President sign unassented bills into law.
Where the second issue is concerned, the bill is far too critical for the financial status of this country to play ‘who will blink first’ games now; the matter of the unassented bills and anything else over which the government has been delinquent really should be dealt with in a different context.
As for the amendments APNU is seeking, up until two days ago when a partial measure of clarification was forthcoming, no one was clear as to what these were, since they had never been made public. Ms Teixeira made this complaint last year, and repeated it again last week. She is right. The government as much as anyone else was entitled to know what changes the opposition was seeking long before we reached this late stage in the proceedings. In any event, no one can gauge whether or not the government side will dig in its heels in relation to the opposition’s proposals, although one hopes they can see their way to making some essential compromises, as well as take on board appropriate recommendations made by private individuals earlier last week.
However, if APNU is still dissatisfied at the end of the committee process, that would not be an excuse to sink the bill. Apart from anything else, it also has to pass the FATF. If the opposition votes against the bill tomorrow (as opposed to abstaining) it is not the government which the citizenry will blame for the consequences which follow; it is the opposition. The harassed inhabitants of this country will not be concerned with abstractions about dereliction, nonfeasance or constitutional violation in circumstances where their remittances and bank dealings, for example, are affected; they will reduce the issue of causation to something very simple. And that simplicity has an electoral price.