President Irfaan Ali’s rebuke of two members of the Guyana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GYEITI) for their role in this country’s suspension from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) came from a place of misinformation, as among a number of reasons, their abstaining from voting could not impact the decision, board members Vanda Radzik and Mike McCormack have said .
In a letter to the President that they have made public, Radzik and McCormack, who are part of the Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG) of GYEITI, said they were attempting to clear up misinformation about the issue and “set the record straight”.
Following Stabroek News’ report last week on Guyana’s suspension from the Norway-based EITI for failing to meet an end-of-year submission of the 2020 report, Ali, in a Face-book video that same day, said his government was firmly committed to openness and accountability, and blamed members of the MSG for the country’s predicament.
“Judging from the opinions attributed to you in the press concerning developments in the GYEITI, it seems that you are badly advised both about the Extractive Indus-tries Transparency Initiative rules and procedures for producing Terms of Reference (TOR) for the EITI Report and also about what prompted our vote to abstain on the TOR at the MSG meeting of February 22nd 2023,” the letter to the President stated.
It explained that the MSG comprises three groups in civil society, industry and government, with each sector selecting its own members.
Highlighting that the MSG’s representatives are not paid for their services, by its own decision, Radzik and McCormack noted that a founding principle of the MSG was to always seek consensus in decision-making. They said that the group had resorted to a vote only on two occasions in seven years.
Providing a summary of the events leading up to GYEITI receiving the letter of suspension from EITI on February 17, the two MSG members said that their explanation was rooted in facts from the EITI Standard that can be found on the organization’s website.
In August 2022, they said, at an MSG Statutory Meeting, a request was received from GYEITI National Coordinator (NC) Prem Misir for the retroactive approval of TOR for the 4th Annual Report, which Misir himself had produced.
“The MSG unanimously declined to approve this request on the grounds that the content of the TOR was seriously defective and that its submission to the ministry by the NC without allegedly the benefit of an MSG review, input and approval was a serious violation of the EITI Standard.
The Standard vests all authority pertaining to both content and process of the TOR in the MSG,” the letter to the President stated.
In addition, the letter also highlighted that it was not the first time that Misir was deficient in his work. “The issue of the Annual Report was only the latest example of the allegedly deficient performance of the NC. Details of such defects are documented elsewhere and noted in the Minutes of MSG meetings which are part of the public record,” the letter stated.
Following the unani-mous decline, members of the MSG could no longer locate Misir and it was afterwards realized that he had left without notification that he would be gone. Misir was absent from his office for some four months, they said, but that did not stop the MSG from pressing on with the work at hand.
“During the months of the NC’s absence the MSG worked assiduously with the Permanent Secretary to address both the crisis in the Secretariat and the need to produce a valid TOR. Consequently, in November two senior civil servants were seconded to the NS from the MNR and a work-plan for production of the TOR for the Report was set in motion,” the letter said.
“The arrangement by the MNR and MSG approval of the two senior staff positions breathed new life into GYEITI and the NS became productive for the first time since the appointment of the NC in early 2022 and began to work assiduously to pro-duce a revised TOR,” it added.
In view of this satisfactory development, the letter said, at the 58th Meeting of the MSG Statutory Body in December 2022, a decision was recorded that, “The MSG concluded that it was no longer necessary for the Co-Chairs to engage with the National Coordinator since the PS had reported at a Co- Chairs meeting that the post of National Coordinator had been vacated.”
The letter continued that at that meeting the propo-sal to conduct a perfor-mance evaluation of Misir was agreed to by the MSG-Civic, on the condition that it be undertaken expedi-tiously and this process was set in motion.
But before that could happen, “Without notice or explanation, the NC reappeared and presented himself at the January 2023 (59th) MSG meet-ing,” the letter added.
It was at that meeting that the Board was told by Minister of Natural Re-sources Vickram Bharrat that he personally had begun to negotiate directly with the EITI International Secretariat to secure an extension of the deadline for the 4th Annual Report and requested the MSG’s support for this action.
But the MSG only received a copy of the letter after it had been sent. It was noted that EITI sets out how an extension is granted and the minister had not followed protocol.
“The EITI Standard clearly states that any request for extension ‘must be made in advance of the deadline and be endorsed by the Multi-Stakeholder Group’ (Art.7),” the letter outlined.
Guyana has previously received extensions from the EITI, which were granted on requests that followed the guidelines of the EITI Standard.
The letter to the President said that in late January the MSG-Civic wrote to Bharrat, inform-ing him that its actions would continue to be guided by the December MSG decision.
Meanwhile, the MSG-Civic said that it has conducted its Performance Evaluation of Misir and is currently participating in the ongoing process.
The vote abstention, Radzik and McCormack’s letter said, said “was consistent with the position communicated to the minister.”
