Govt. violating Constitution, basic law by not setting up Procurement Comm. – AFC

“The majority Opposition must hold the Government accountable. The Government is flagrantly violating the Constitution, our basic law, which commands the establishment and operationalisation of a Procurement Commission which will result in Cabinet’s role being phased out thereafter.”
This was the assertion of Leader of the Alliance for Change (AFC) Khemraj Ramjattan as he was responding to the recent pronouncements by the General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Clement Rohee that they are not linking the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) with the passage of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Bill (AML/CFT).

Leader of the AFC Khemraj Ramjattan

“In national politics, just like in international politics, linkages of issues are the order of the day… Clement Rohee very well knows this,” the AFC leader noted.
According to Ramjattan, on the question of the Public Procurement Commission, the reason why the PPP sees it fit to not link the Procurement Commission with the AML/CFT Bill is “because, and only because, it wants to perpetuate their corrupt gorging at the trough, perpetuate nepotism, and the distribution of the illicit proceeds from kick-backs from contractors allowed to win in the regime of no Public Procurement Commission.”
He said further that “this cash-cow will immediately be slaughtered with this Commission coming into being. That will mean a drying up of its coffers and a withering of its impact as a party which, these days, buys the vote. This is precisely Rohee’s dialectic behind not wanting linkage with the AML/CFT and the Procurement Commission. This is the PPP’s reason for unconditionality.”
Ramjattan outlined that the PPP will seek to negotiate everything else but the Public Procurement Commission, and cautioned that the combined opposition must be united on this front. “It is paramount!”
Ramjattan said that everyone was fooled when it was agreed by all since 2001 when the Constitution was reformed to have established a PPC, and in 2003 when the Procurement Act gave teeth to the Constitutional provisions of 2001. He said that the PPP Government then agreed to operationalise the PPC in 2003 December “when Jagdeo and Corbin signed a communiquÉ to that effect. Nothing happened.”
According to Ramjattan, when he was part of the PPP he asked the then President Bharrat Jagdeo and then General Secretary Donald Ramotar “why not bring the Procurement Commission into being? They would respond that the Party had other important priorities.”
“What could be more important than a Constitutional prescription? The PPP, Government and Party, loves the absence of the Procurement Commission. It’s coming into operationalisation… they fear to death. It is the same thing with another constitutional prescription such as the holding of Local Government Elections every three years” said Ramjattan.
The AFC leader posited that “Guyana loses financially, directly or indirectly, approximately $4B to $6B minimum every year from corruption as a result of no Procurement Commission. You multiply that over the years since 2003, and that is catastrophic!”
He asserted that “we have lost out on a whole generation not knowing anything about managing local affairs and the empowerment which comes with local democracy having missed out on six Local Government Elections under the PPP.”
“It is the PPP as open violators of the Constitution who have forced both economic and political hardships on Guyanese. It blacklisted our Constitution, our Procurement Commission for some 11 years; and Local Government Elections for some 20 years” Ramjattan outlined.
He noted that the PPP not wanting to come out of its Politics of “No” and being so unwilling to compromise with the Opposition has made them “the sole and direct cause of the international blacklisting of Guyana.”
Ramjattan outlined that Guyana has a couple of weeks to go to the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) meeting on the 20th June, 2014 and in the period up to then “we can procure that Commission, and have the new legislative regime in place for the Local Government Elections this year by the assenting of those Opposition Bills and ensure passage of the AML/CFT Bill.”
“This Government loves to push us to the brink. Though negotiating at the precipice is perilous, the AFC will provide the right balance to secure a win-win-win for all Guyana. I need not repeat my cry made several times recently, minority government demands multiparty governance!” Ramjattan decried.