The Procurement Commission will protect taxpayers and reduce corruption
Dear Editor, The Minister of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh has issued a call for Guyanese, particularly the opposition to rise above partisan politics on the Anti-Money Laundering Bill via a GINA release in October 2013. What two-facedness? Where is the voice of the Minister of Finance and his sense of decency and respect for the people when it comes to a piece of public act that is even more important than the anti-money laundering bill – the Public Procurement Commission? What are the positions taken by Clinton Urling and others in the GCCI and Webster of the PSC on the PPP regime’s refusal to establish the Procurement Commission? What about the promise made by Ramotar to discipline Mohamed Sattaur and Martin Goolsarran for the alleged corruption at NCN? We believe that the Procurement Commission would help to protect the taxpayers’ money and reduce corruption. We therefore debunk the Minister’s words and ask him to represent himself properly since he continues to misrepresent the facts and continues to mislead the Guyanese people on the Public Procurement Commission. It is the PPP that refuses to name its nominees to the Commission and that has directly contributed to the stagnation of the work of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament thus denying Guyana a more robust and transparent check and balance system to secure better value for the taxpayers’ money. The Minister of Finance has patently failed to implement his own bill. Facts are facts; it was a majority PPP in Parliament that voted in favor of this Procurement Law but now that the demons of corruption are all over the PPP, the potency of the bill is too much; it has credibility since it puts the work of the Ministry of Finance including the Procurement System under the microscope and that, for this Minister of Finance and the PPP cabal, is unacceptable to the continuation of the mass corruption from the top to the bottom of the PPP Government. That is why the Minister of Finance and his political directors continue to frustrate the work of the Public Accounts Committee every day. How can they continue to operate in this manner and with a double standard on the Money Laundering Bill? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and until the Public Procurement Commission is in place, the Money Laundering Bill will have to be carefully scrutinized by the majority opposition until all is right. If this money laundering bill is important to the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabal and their business buddies in the leadership of the private sector, then the Public Procurement Commission should be equally important to them if they have the people’s interest at heart. There is no better trade than fair trade so they should compromise and give the opposition what they want; that is a functional Procurement Commission. We believe that the establishment of the Public Procurement Commission by the PPP is just as equal to the passing of the Money Laundering Bill in Parliament by APNU and the AFC. Only the abnormal PPP regime would think otherwise. We want to humbly advise all politicians in the majority opposition that the electorate will be very unkind to them if they surrender to the PPP propaganda on the Money laundering Bill without having the Procurement Commission in return. We know what happened to a certain party that voted for the two bills associated with the Amalia Falls Project. That party is still struggling to regain normalcy. The PPP cabal continues to say the system is fair without the Procurement Commission but that is patently untrue since there are no checks and balances in the public procurement system and thus the Guyanese people continue to lose billions of dollars to the corrupt class that dominates the work and actions of the PPP. It is time to protect the people’s patrimony. Dr. Asquith Rose and Harish S. Singh.
