Saying that errant public officials including ministers have been given enough time to declare their assets and liabilities, opposition parliamentarian Anil Nandlall on Friday called on the Integrity Commission to commence legal proceedings.
“Here you have a flagrant violation of the Integrity Act being committed with impunity and no effort is being made by those who control the Integrity Commission to prosecute these offenders. The Director of Public Prosecutions office should be engaged and advice obtained and persons prosecuted,” Nandlall told Stabroek News.
From last November to now, seven lists containing names of hundreds of public officers who have not complied with the Act, have been published in the Official Gazette and based on the feedback from the commission, many of them are still to submit their declaration forms.
Nandlall pointed that that many have failed to capitalise on the second chance given to them and, as such, should be taken to court in keeping with the provisions outlined in the Integrity Commission Act.
The Act states that those officials who fail to submit their declarations or submit declarations that are false or incomplete shall be liable, on summary conviction, to “a fine of twenty-five thousand dollars and to imprisonment for a term of not less than six months nor more than one year, and where the offence involves the non-disclosure, by the declarant, of property, which should have been disclosed in the declaration, the magistrate convicting the person shall order the person to make full disclosure of the property within a given time and on failure to comply with the order of the magistrate within the given time, the said offence shall be deemed to be a continuing offence and the person shall be liable to a further fine of ten thousand dollars for each day on which the offence continues.”
The commission’s Chairman Kumar Doraisami had repeatedly signalled that legal action will be taken. In December last year, he had given the errant officials two months to comply. He subsequently said that this process would commence once a legal/compliance officer was hired. This person was expected to be on the job in March.
Stabroek News reached out to Doraisami over a two-day period but no response was forthcoming. He had asked this newspaper to return a call on Wednesday as he was driving at the time. However, subsequent calls to his phone went unanswered. Stabroek News again made efforts on Friday but there was still no answer.
In a letter published in Friday’s edition of this newspaper, public relations consultant Kit Nascimento raised the issue, while pointing out that very senior people holding important offices including ministers and parliamentarians, have been allowed by government to serve while “ignoring and disobeying the law…”
Efforts to get a response from newly-appointed Minister of State Dawn Hastings-Williams were unsuccessful. Her office told Stabroek News that she was in a meeting but the information would be passed to her and she would delegate someone to give a response.
Facet
Nandlall, in an invited comment, said that what is being witnessed is “another facet of decline in the rule of law in Guyana perpetrated by persons working in the state agencies and in the government apparatus at the highest echelon.”
Speaking specifically to the ministers, he said that these were persons who held themselves out to the electorate as the “beacon of propriety, transparency and accountability.”
He recalled that in the National Assembly, the opposition requested that the government members disclose to the House, their integrity commission statements as well as their submissions to the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA). “They declined. They accused the opposition of corruption and we invited them, that we will put our integrity statements out, our GRA statements out and let them reciprocate. They declined,” he said.
Reminding that he was named in the first list that was published but quickly rectified the non-filing, Nandlall said that six default notices were subsequently issued and yet no legal action was taken.
“So you see it happening with the Constitution at the highest level. You see it happening with the ordinary laws of the land and now the law that requires and exacts accountability and transparency, it is visited with the same kind of violation and disregard,” he said.
Nascimento, in his letter, wrote that the enforcement of the law is being ignored in exactly the same manner and with precisely the same contempt for the law, as shown by political leaders to that of holding dual citizenship while serving in the National Assembly.
He observed that the Chairman of the Integrity Commission has resorted to publicising the names of these offenders on seven separate occasions but has not moved to enforce the law and prosecute the offenders and he questioned the reason for this.
“All of these offenders continue to act in authority, every day, make decisions every day on our behalf, spend our money and cause us, the ordinary citizens, to conform to the law which they enforce or be prosecuted. We also pay their salaries,” he said.
“I ask, therefore, why should we respect or obey or conform to any decision that these persons who presume to govern our lives make or seek to impose on us, the ordinary citizens, who pay our taxes and obey the law. I ask, have they no sense of civic duty, no conscience?” he questioned before saying that when next he asks people to reelect him, President David Granger should explain why this illegal practice and behaviour is allowed to continue in his government without restraint or restriction or punishment.
According to the Act, every person who is a person in public life, not being a member of the commission, is required to file a declaration every year on or before June 30th and in cases where such persons cease to be a person in public life, within 30 days from the date on which the person ceases to be a person in public life.
“A declaration under subsection (I) or (2) shall give full, true and complete particulars of the assets and liabilities as on the relevant date, and the income during a period of twelve months immediately prior to the relevant date, of the person filling the declaration (whether the assets were held by that person in his own name or in the name of any other person) and of the spouse and children of such person to the extent to which such person has knowledge of the same,” it further states.
The first list, which was published in November last year, contained 87 names, inclusive of 15 ministers, the Speaker and opposition Members of Parliament; the second, which was published shortly after, contained the names of 80 defaulting GRA officials; the third, which was published on December 8th, included the names of errant regional officials in all ten administrative regions; the fourth, which was published in January, had 160 names including that of Bank of Guyana Governor General Dr Gobind Ganga, Audit Director (ag) Audrey Badley and councillors from nine of the ten Regional Democratic Councils; the fifth list was published on February 2nd; the sixth in March and it contained 163 names of senior officials of several public entities and the seventh was published last weekend and contained 74 names inclusive of Chairman of the National Procurement & Tender Administration Board, Berkley Wickham, and other Ministry of Finance officials and senior staff at the Guyana Elections Commission.
