In a country of incremental advances in media freedom arising through no effort on the part of government but rather on account of the gradual rolling out of an increased number of media houses and advancements in enabling technology, the various publics have, over time, become more vociferous, more empowered in ‘talking back’ to government.
Increasingly, as was so manifestly demonstrated during the news reporting period covering the March 2020 general elections and their eventual outcome, the transformations that the media have undergone allow for audiences to benefit from the placing of a range of points-of-view in the public domain thereby allowing for more vigorous national discourse. This, as we continue to find out, makes for a more enlightened society.
This, of course, does not mean that various types of official restraints on the public’s right to know are not still embedded in the system. These are frequently intended to stifle the dissemination of official information that originates with government, which practice, is all too often designed to conceal one form or another of official skulduggery. One of the tried and proven approaches to the official suppression of information is the ‘doctoring before dissemination’ approach. State-issued media releases, more often than not, embrace the ‘talk half and lef half’ axiom.
There is a very recent example of a Minister of government directing that such information as emanates from a particular department within his Ministry benefit from his particular perusal before dissemination.
Rarely if ever does any particular period go by without the administration of the state becoming cluttered with either suspicions of irregularity at the level of government officials with regard to the disbursement of public funds for one reason or another. Among the most prevalent of these are those of graft and corruption incidents associated with the execution of state-financed projects. When the public decibel level over such occurrences appears to be approaching a crescendo the political administration unfailingly ‘locks away’ such information as might threaten to transform hints of suspicion into established fact. In other words information on a state project in relation to things like expenditures including payments for services and time lines for completion can become ‘state secrets.’
In this week’s Stabroek Business we report on the implementation by the government of another CARICOM member country, Jamaica, of a mechanism created by the Inter-American Development and known as the InvestmentMap which allows citizens electronic access to blow by blow developments in the execution of state and IDB-funded projects that allow for the tracking of scope, expenditure, time lines and other pertinent information, thereby facilitating the public with regard to the progress of the projects. Such information can also help suitably informed persons to make their own transparency analyses. By signing on to this arrangement what the Jamaican government has done is to open itself up to public scrutiny in important areas of public accountability.
There can be no question that the integrity of Guyana’s governance process would benefit considerably from an enhanced level of trust in matters relating to the administration of the public purse, more particularly in circumstances where costly state or donor-funded projects appear to create elbow room for myriad forms of irregularity…so that the question arises as to whether or not the people of Guyana ought not to be in an indecent haste to see government sign on to the IDB’s InvestmentMap. By implementing an InvestmentMap regime here, government would be opening itself up considerably more than it has customarily done to public scrutiny, availing itself of such circumstances as arise to have its feet held to the fire. Enhancing the ability of the Guyanese people to effectively track the disbursement of state funds, particularly where costly infrastructure and other high-cost investments are concerned could be a game-changer for public trust in the overall governance process.
