Absence of procurement commission is breach of trust
 
Recently, the America Secretary for Health and Human Services wrote:

“The essence of good government is trust”.
The President of Guyana had exposed that the Surendra deal for the specialty hospital was tainted by fraud, and the Attorney General

promised that legal proceedings are apace to recover almost one

billion dollars that the impugned company had collected in

advance without turning a straw for the project.

In any other country where accountability is a feature of government,

heads would have been rolled, but not in Guyana.

That and other failed and corrupted projects should have sent

a signal message that Cabinet ought to keep its hands off

the contract process, as this continuing practice has open the

door wide to politicians who use their offices to lobby and to

indulge in nepotism.

The answer has been and remains the establishment of the Public Procurement Commission. It must be a high distrust of to feel

that our public servants are unfit to make procurement decisions.

The government has so far argued that the opposition is only

interest in wresting procurement decision from the Cabinet.

But what the Cabinet is doing is contrary to law, and the President

is in violation of the Guyana Constitution. The law is what it is,

and places this responsibility over procurement outside of Cabinet.

In calling for the Commission the AFC is not trying to

sabotage governance, but embellish it with acceptable features

of check and balance, which is a basic tenet of democracy and core expectation in all free nations.

But the self-insulating arrogance of this government is that it

does not trust  professionals, and deems them unfit to procure

public projects. 

 
Today, we maintain that the Public Procurement Commission

should be established without further delay. Until this is done,

Guyana will continue to lose valuable resources on bungled and

failed deals, and our procurement process will be tainted and

paralyzed by political corruption and cronyism.

October 16, 2014