The government has not been transparent enough in all of its actions in its first 100 days in office, including in the appointment of ministers, which was “untidy,” Transparency Institute of Guyana Inc (TIGI) President Calvin Bernard says.
“There was a lot of change that was occurring right at that top level but the public was never informed that these things were going to happen… that we are even going to change the names of ministries or that we are going to have these other ministries,” Bernard told Stabroek News in a recent interview.
He said there was significant restructuring of the Cabinet without warning as President David Granger had appointed three ministers to head new ministries—the ministries of Citizenship, Social Cohesion and Gover-nance‒and also renamed all of the ministries except for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In this process, Bernard said, there was no room for the public to have an input or even to question why, and he said if the government really wanted to be transparent in this instance it should have come to the public and offered an explanation.
He said answers were provided after the public had reacted and questions were asked.
According to Bernard, if an issue is presented to the public and there is a very strong negative reaction, then it should not be done. He said a good example of this was the reported proposal to raise salaries for ministers, which was ventilated in public and which eventually was not done when the national budget was presented. This issue was raised in public by the opposition PPP/C, which claimed government wanted to raise ministers’ salaries by 100%. The government later denied the claim, saying there was a review in place to set salaries that will differentiate the variety of posts, including junior ministers, senior ministers and vice-presidents.
Bernard believes that there was a “peddle back” by the government on the issue following the negative reaction of the public.
“That was a case where you see the public’s reaction to an initial notice of intent would have caused the government to rethink,” Bernard said.
Asked about the reports that the government may have arbitrarily dismissed persons, Bernard said while in any government change you would expect some replacement of key persons, removing persons requires due process.
“It is unavoidable that you tell the public why John Jones has been removed from office, you don’t have to disclose every single [thing]… but you should at least be able to say these are the general reasons why he is being removed,” he stated.
He said some posts, such as Permanent Secretaries (PS), had become political appointments and this should not have been.
“The Permanent Sec-retary, much like the Director General for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were people who would have worked from government to government. They are supposed to be apolitical, they are not supposed to be subjected to political influences, and they keep the machinery of the ministry running independent of the administrative people,” he noted.
Bernard said under the previous administration the positions had become significantly political and he cautioned that there are signs that the situation is continuing. “We see a similar thing already starting,” he said.
Shortly after the government came into office, Colin Croal, PS of the then Ministry of Local Government and Nigel Dharamlall, PS of the then Ministry of Amerindian Affairs, were removed from their positions. They both had mounted the PPP/C platform and had resigned from their posts to become candidates but then attempted to withdraw their resignations shortly after the elections.
PS of the Ministry of Labour Patrick Findlay was also removed after the ministry was reconstituted into the Ministry of Social Protection and it was stated that his position had become redundant.
The PS of the Ministry of the Presidency Omar Shariff still holds his position despite being a PPP/C candidate and his appearance at a PPP/C press conference at Freedom House following the last elections. PS of the Ministry of Public Health Leslie Cadogan was recently dismissed for alleged gross negligence and misconduct in the performance of his duties.
“The issue is not about the defence of the PS’s at all, but a matter of the due process because what you are saying is that anybody that takes up afterwards can just do the same thing. The question is whether or not due process was followed in their removal,” Bernard said, while making it clear that this position is his as opposed to that of TIGI.
He said the appointment of new PS’s should be looked at as while there might have been grounds for the persons being removed “what was the process for hiring new persons to make sure that you are not doing the same thing that the guy before you did, in terms of getting somebody in who you think you are comfortable with.”
He questioned if the positions were advertised and what were the criteria for selection. However, apart from Dharamlall’s position, which was filled by Vibert Welch, the other PS vacancies were filled by persons already in the system and who were operating in the capacity of PS or acting PS.
According to Bernard, some of the new appointments in other areas have left persons wondering who these persons are and who else might have been considered for the job and what were the criteria for selection.
There were also multiple criticisms of the make-up of the various state boards, including the public’s perception that there was little dialogue prior to their announcement. Asked about this, Bernard said the directors of TIGI had not spoken about the issue but he said the public should have been told how the appointees were qualified for the positions.
Speaking on the appointment of the former AFC Member of Parliament Dr Veerasammy Ramayya as the Regional Executive Officer of Region Six, Bernard said the appointment appears to be more on “along the lines of patching something that had gone bad.” Dr Ramayya, whose appointment has been defended by the government, was appointed after he had announced that he had quit the AFC party as he had not been offered a suitable position by the coalition government.
He noted that there has been a lot of outcry on the issue but the government has not budged.
