Dear Editor,
Isn’t is rather revealing that the person most aggrieved by the imminent passage of the State Asset Recovery Bill is a lawyer and accountant of some of the largest companies in Guyana.
The attack on Prof Clive Thomas by Christopher Ram seems to have a very deep edge to it. A very personal edge (‘If the SARA Bill is not radically restructured it will be challenged in the courts’ Sunday Stabroek, February 26).
Earlier this year, Mr Ram called Prof Thomas not a “fit and proper” to run SARU. Yet, Mr Ram was on a list of names of potential Gecom Heads that was deemed not fit and proper and that most rational Guyanese would deem not fit and proper.
Mr Ram, rather than address the issues of the Bill in his letter chooses to spend the first part of it to attack Prof Thomas who a few weeks ago received kudos from his peers at the launch of the CLR James Magazine that was a tribute to Prof Thomas. Similarly at the launch of the Clive Thomas Lecture series in November last year, similar praises were sung by a wide cross-section of Guyanese and foreigners, as a man who is considered the most pre-eminent economist in the Caribbean today. Mr Ram is the only one, apart from the Private Sector Commission (PSC), who questions Prof Thomas’s willingness to go after anyone that stole state assets.
Why this personal attack including questioning Prof Thomas’s outstanding decades-long work on GuySuCo and stolen assets? Even Mr Ram in his presentation to the GuySuCo CoI suggested that the taxpayers should not continue to fund GuySuCo, as can be seen on his website.
But let’s get to the facts. Surely Mr Ram does not deny the scale of theft and corruption in Guyana, especially during the last 23 years. Is he disputing the facts of the Auditor General on procurement fraud stated to be about $28 billion per year?
Mr Ram claims the Bill gives the Director extraordinary powers ‒ more than the President, etc. This is not the case. Why doesn’t he quote the lines of the Bill for the general public to interpret? Why doesn’t he claim the DPP has more powers than the President, as she certainly does in criminal matters? The Bill states that the DPP, police and GRA should be obligated to provide information when necessary. Not that the Director has their powers. How deceptive a recasting of the Bill. But then we are dealing with a lawyer.
It is time to drain the swamp of corruption and stolen assets.
Yours faithfully,
Eric Phillips
