Dear Editor,
Attorney Bernard de Santos recently claimed in Court that a critic had an unnatural interest in Mr Jagdeo. That claim was greeted with some amusement by citizens most of whom have the impression that it is Mr Jagdeo who is afflicted with obsessions. True to form three Thursdays ago a N.A. TV channel featured him delivering yet another attack on me during the course of the Linden rally. Made brave by a crowd bussed in from elsewhere, Mr Jagdeo and his side kick, whom he disrespectfully addresses as ’Ramotar’ in public, made a number of points about me and my competence. At the same time there have also been a number of newspaper advertisements disguised as APNU+AFC Coalition positions. For the most part these efforts are libelous and typically despicable. The most recent of these was an advertisement entitled, Greenidge Legacy on Accountability and Corruption. Goolsarran claims Greenidge tried to muzzle him. (KN April 12, 2015.).
It alleged that I:
- always objected to Mr Goolsarran speaking to the press and actually tried to ‘prevent him speaking to the press’ – muzzle
- said that the Auditor General ”did not have the legal mandate to check on divestment“
iii. claimed to have the support of the Attorney General
- I believed that he should report to the Ministry of Finance (MOF)
In spite of my invitation to the PPP and Mr Jagdeo to produce the letter, they have failed to do so. It is interesting that they have not managed to find it but he did find something he claims to have been a copy of the transport to my residence.
But that is not surprising. In fact, there is no letter instructing Mr Anand Goolsarran not to check on divestment or to speak to the press on divestment
It is significant that Mr Goolsarran’s original comments in the advert begin with reference to, ”an alleged plot by the new government to smear the PNC”. As is usual with the PPP one story from one context is being used for a completely different and inappropriate case. A look at the newspapers of early November 1992 would show that Dr Luncheon had accused myself and Desmond Hoyte of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars of state property. At the same time Mr Anand Goolsarran, the then Auditor General, also announced that he was undertaking a survey to find state property including 119 missing state vehicles. When challenged in a letter written to the press by myself on behalf of myself and Hugh Desmond Hoyte, he claimed that this was a coincidence and that his search for the cars and other state properties had nothing to do with the Government pronouncements or a PPP plot. As far as I am aware the vehicles were never missing and were therefore not ‘found’ although the AG’s Department and the regional Chairman Region 5 and others searched all the places I had been known to visit in motor vehicles!
At the time my Grandmother said to me do not worry about him, “thing a come na ting a go and, wah miss yu nah pass yu“.
Mr Goolsarran and Dr Luncheon can be asked to explain these missing millions and whether they found any of it in my possession or that of the Hoytes.
The letter of March 26th 1992 to Mr Goolsarran had, as the Americans would say, a history, a history of absolutely remarkable coincidences. The foregoing case was not the first and had absolutely nothing to do with divestment, access to the Press or the question of Ministerial control of the Auditor General’s Department it had to do with political games in which the Auditor General seemed to be playing an improper part but which he suggested were coincidences. They have not been raised afresh by me but by the PPP to embarrass Mr Goolsarran. I have responded in order to clear my name.
At the heart of the issue triggering the letter was not divestment at all but the leaking of information about confidential meetings to the press resulting in some participants in a meeting being given credit for the actions of others. The letter called on Mr Goolsarran to desist from giving Press conferences on confidential matters he had discussed with myself and his colleagues such as Eddie Layne, Accountant General. It provided reasons which contrary to the suggestion provided in the advertisement, did not turn on the biased Press. Obviously it was but the concern was about the selective and slanted manner in which that information was provided. Furthermore, since I was more capable than the Auditor General of explaining my own policy positions to the Press the Auditor General was asked to desist from addressing those matters.
My comments on March 26 1992 regarding divestment were prompted by a deadlock that Mr Goolsarran’s actions had precipitated. He had directed the CEO of Guystac to provide him with information. The CEO, on the advice of the Guystac lawyers, refused to accede to Mr Goolsarran’s demands and indeed declined his suggestion to have further dialogue with his office on the matter. The CEO appealed to me as Minister of Finance and my reaction was to give them the benefit of my advice. In the draft response written from London I advised Mr Goolsarran to consult with the Attorney General before taking further action. The Solicitor General and the Attorney General’s office, looked at the draft, concurred with the substantive position of Guystac and advised me to indicate their agreement. In other words, special audits of the agencies in question in Guystac and COFA were only to be triggered by named officials, none of whom was the Auditor General. I acted as advised and readers will note that the letter was carbon copied to the Attorney General, Mr Keith Massiah, O.E, who remains one of the region’s most distinguished and independent jurists and one of Guyana’s constitutional authorities. He had joined a long list of exceptionally gifted jurists with whom I had the privilege of working up to that time. Those jurists included Sonny Ramphal, Fred Wills and Dr Mohammed Shahabuddeen, not to mention H.D. Hoyte, LFS Burnham, Bryn Pollard, Julian Nurse and Prof Ralf Carnegie. It would have been very presumptuous of me to speak on behalf of the Former Chancellor on a matter of legal interpretation.
This dispute was a legal one not one about the powers of a Minister or about the use of funds. Mr Goolsarran is quoted as saying that, “he [the Minister] was of the view that I [the Auditor General] did not have the legal mandate to check on divestment….” The letter makes no such assertion. It does however say that I had been advised by the Attorney General’s Chambers, a fact which Mr Goolsarran dismisses with the comment, “he further claimed that his view had the support of the A.G. (Attorney General)”, to which he adds that I had violated the Constitution.
The Auditor General had no basis for disputing either the existence of the advice or the competence of the Attorney General. He never sought a copy of the actual advice from me and he did not provide an alternative legal opinion. The Auditor General cannot be his own legal adviser or that of the Auditor General’s Department. If he had provided Mr Jagdeo and the PPP with proof that I had misrepresented the views of the Attorney General’s Chambers or if he had secured different legal advice from the then Auditor General’s Department’s lawyers the PPP should have published it. Even in the absence of such, the allegations about my infringing the Constitution are patent nonsense since it was Guystac which refused his request. In any case, in the event that he had such absolute faith in his own legal prowess he should have taken the matter to the Courts.
The fact is this; the Auditor General made a demand of an institution which challenged his powers and refused to comply. Having received no information he could not audit. There was an appeal to me and in my intervention I took the opportunity to refer to the unprincipled manner in which internal matters found their way to one of the Auditor General’s neighbours, another coincidence. The reference to the Press had nothing to do with attempts to preventing an audit.
It is dishonest of the PPP, Jagdeo and anyone else to suggest that the Minister who was at the end of the process was the cause of Mr Goolsarran’s travails.
Mr Jagdeo has his own personal beefs or obsessions with Mr Goolsarran and Mr Asgar Ally (and clearly Mr Greenidge) and the raising of this matter is an effort to also get back at Goolsarran and myself for being such a thorn in the PPP’s side. Goolsarran cannot be forgiven for having reported on the accidentally exposed Stone Scam and later the illegal wildlife trade fiasco of 2004 involving, yes, wait for it, Dr Luncheon et al!
Granny, you were so right!
My legacy is too robust to be tarnished by these reprehensible manoeuvres and whatever I wrote to Mr Goolsarran and, whatever my supposed expectations about the Auditor General’s reporting line, it did not lead me or the PNC to running him out of office. Today he is part of a very long line-up of current-PNC and former PNC-critics who have found that the PPP is so intolerant that the events and problems they encountered under the PNC now seem tame and pale into insignificance when compared with those to which they were later and currently subjected.
Yours faithfully,
Carl Greenidge