President Irfaan Ali and several of his ministers yesterday launched what will be seen as an attack on a number of civil society organisations which recently called for greater accountability in the extractive sector and other parts of national life.
In a brief statement posted on the PPP/C Facebook page, Ali is reported as stating ‘My government and the PPP/C government believes strongly that civil society has an important role to play in any democratic society. But in civil society a role cannot be convenient. And we cannot confuse civil society with individual organizations, that is, organizations that are run by individuals or are not open to the wider membership of our country. These organizations cannot be the conscience of truth or the conscience of society when they are convenient in the way they address issues”.
On his Facebook page, Attorney General Anil Nandlall SC said in part:
There is in existence, a mysterious group of critics of the PPP/C Government, constantly spewing their venomous attacks under the disguise of various fronts masquerading as civil society organizations- some known, some unknown and some simply fabricated.
To disseminate their vicious falsehoods, they even invoke the names of some organizations without the knowledge or authority of the persons in charge of those organizations. More on this issue will be disclosed to the public in short time.
Today, two daily newspapers carried reports of a “blistering” critical Statement of this sinister group against the Government of Guyana. The organizations purporting to be the author of this Statement include:
Community-based Rehabilitation (CBR),
East Coast Development Committees (ECDC),
Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA),
Guyana Organization of Indigenous Peoples (GOIP),
Guyana Society for the Blind,
Guyana Worker’s Union,
National Toshaos Council (NTC),
Red Thread,
Transparency Institute Guyana Inc (TIGI) and
Ursuline Sisters in Guyana.
Apart from the usual suspects, many readers would be learning of some of these organizations for the first time ( for eg ECDC& CBR). Similarly, many would learning for the first of a statement of a political nature being issued by some of these organizations- for example, the Guyana Society for the Blind and the Ursuline Sisters!
Regarding the usual suspects, I have already ventilated my views on the one- man organization, GHRA. Having heard nothing from Red Thread for the entirety of the APNU+AFC’s tenure in Government and the five months of attempts to slaughter democracy, I honestly thought that outfit was defunct. I am wrong. The PPP is in Government and the Red Thread is back. The duplicity knows no limit!
And what are some of the complaints of this ominous bunch?
-The usual mantra of racism; the rhetorical lack of accountability; that local government organs are not being allowed to function independently, and
lastly and perhaps most bizarrely, that the Government is moving at a “bewildering pace”!
On Wednesday, the civil society groups, as reported by Stabroek News, expressed discomfort with what they see as the government’s increasing lack of accountability especially as it pertains to the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) and the extractive sectors.
“There is no longer any official institution or agency to which anyone – including those sympathetic to the administration – can turn for an objective assessment of major issues affecting the future of Guyana”, they said in a press release. Further, entities such as Parliamentary Sectoral Committees, Regional governments, and Neighbourhood Democratic Councils are not functioning as they should, leaving Guyanese in the dark about who to trust and what to believe”, the statement said.
According to the release, “The essence of accountability is the provision of trustworthy information, i.e. facts that enable free, prior and informed consent. Currently citizens rely on sources pieced together by the media, anecdotes from an Energy Conference, remarks to visiting dignitaries, or the latest foreign investor unveiling his plans.”
The release put forward three examples of what it considered to be instances of government not being accountable. 1) The “stripping” of the Public Oversight & Accountability Committee (POAC) from the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) Act; 2) reducing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “to a rubber-stamp,” and 3) the pending appointment of a “high-profile party person” to head the Guyana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GYEITI).
And in the case of the Parliamentary opposition, it opines that the government’s reason for not engaging in even the ‘pretense of consultation” appears to be that the APNU+AFC forfeited any right to accountability as “punishment” for the five-month electoral impasse in 2020. Adding, “With respect to civil society, long-standing ideological suspicion by the ruling party of groups not under party political control has translated into ‘no one voted for them’ and therefore they have no right to accountability.”
As far as the groups are concerned, the control of information in an ethnically and politically polarized society, “in which one side is inclined always to give the rulers who look like them benefit of the doubt and the other side to always suspect mischief” is particularly toxic. Such an approach, it charges, would be unacceptable even were such “opaque: decision-making limited to routine political matters, “However, when dealing with future-of-society issues such as a gas pipeline, a controversial hydroelectric scheme, expanded oil exploration, and the depositing of 30 tons-and-counting of toxic wastes daily on the coastland, the current decision-making process is nothing less than frightening and intolerable.”
The release zeroed in on a particular agency, stating, “It is difficult to identify a more relevant agency to our current situation in Guyana than GYEITI. It has a clear and limited mandate to contract leading international accountants to produce vital extractive sector information in an annual Report… However, its primary characteristic of trustworthiness is now under threat.”
Mention was made of the person recently identified as the next director of the GYEITI, describing him as someone who “is not known to have competencies in business, economics, finance or the extractive sector.”
And if that were not damning enough, it added, “The absence of required qualifications is aggravated by the fact that his employment record in Guyana has been associated with positions usually reserved for persons trusted by the ruling party.” The release posited that in small politically and ethnically divided states such as Guyana, governed by a “very slim one seat ‘majority’”, it is “imperative” to ensure that the head of the GYEITI Secretariat is both competent in the specifics of the job as well as capable of objectively managing diverse stakeholder’s interests.
The release did not identify the candidate but the government has confirmed that the next Director of the GYEITI will be Dr Prem Misir.
The Natural Resources Fund also came under fire for having its credibility “fatally compromised by party-dominated decision-making.” Also, the replacement of the Minister of Finance with the Presidency in the NRF Act 2021, an Office immune to prosecution, was described as “troubling,” noting that in such circumstances the transparent and trustworthy information all Guyanese have a right to expect about the Fund will be sacrificed.
