The PPP on Monday blasted government for its use of its parliamentary majority to suppress an opposition motion seeking to have all Members of the National Assembly make public their tax returns to the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) over the last 10 years.
Speaking at a press conference, the party’s General Secretary Clement Rohee called the move “a travesty and a contradiction to the practice of good governance, transparency and accountability”.
It was PPP/C Member of Parliament (MP) Juan Edghill who had originally tabled the Motion. During last Thursday’s sitting of the National Assembly, he had further sought to have the government “expeditiously table legislation” to give effect to the motion.
Rohee told reporters that the party is urging the Diplomatic Community to “take note of this backward step by the Granger administration which runs contrary to the much touted call for transparency and accountability while they were in the opposition and is in tandem with the on-going witch-hunting by the Granger administration”.
He said that Transparency International Guyana Institute, the Private Sector and the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) in particular must add this anti-transparency vote by the Granger administration to the “slew of bad governance measures it has already chalked up since its assumption to office”.
Rohee stated that the PPP/C is concerned that both the Prime Minister and the President have a common goal based on their respective comments on matters related to good governance, transparency and accountability.
“The APNU+AFC vote in Parliament against the PPP/C’s Motion is a glowing manifestation of what the Prime Minister and the President have in common”, he said adding that the nation is at risk of being consistently deceived.
Following amendments tabled by government, the motion that was eventually passed by the National Assembly instead of the initial intention called for the reinforcement of the existing legal requirements to have MPs file their income tax returns and make annual declarations to the Integrity Commis-sion.
Edghill declared that the amendments as proposed and later passed by the government side of the House substantially change the intent and spirit of the initial motion and made an attempted to have it withdrawn. Opposition Chief Whip Gail Teixeira, in supporting Edghill’s position, cited precedent as established by former Speaker Ralph Ramkarran, who had ruled in December, 2006 that if an amendment changes the intent of the initial motion, it would be disallowed.
Speaker Barton Scotland, however, noted that the motion as it then stood was not the original one, since it had been amended too many times and now stood as a different motion. It was then put to a vote and passed.
