Dear Editor,
Prior to the 2015 national and regional elections, the APNU+AFC politicians clamoured relentlessly for accountability and transparency, especially in public procurement. Their clarion call was for the establishment of the Public Procurement Commission and for cabinet’s absolute non-involvement in the procurement process. They withheld their support from national budgets, important national projects and important legislation. Indeed, they demanded the immediate establishment of the Procurement Commission and the immediate cessation of cabinet’s ‘no objection’ as the price of their support for these matters. I have no doubt that readers will recall their demands and orchestrations very vividly. In a matter of months, it is astounding how drastically their position on these issues has changed.
They are now in control of the National Assembly, but there is no haste on their part any longer to establish the Procurement Commission – a parliamentary driven process. Two hundred million dollars of contracts have been handed by a Minister to forensic auditors to do audits of public accounts without any resort to public procurement or any other transparent process. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on cleaning the City of Georgetown without any public procurement or other transparent process. A US$15 million project for the construction of the Specialty Hospital was handed by a Minister to a former client of Vice-President Khemraj Ramjattan, without any public tendering or transparent process. Another multi-million dollar wind-farm project is about to be given to a friend, whom the nation recently learnt from Mr Ramjattan himself, helped finance the acquisition of the AFC’s main party office in Georgetown. Again, there was no public procurement or any other transparent process.
Every one of the contracts and projects cited above violates the provisions the Procurement Act which mandates public tendering. They were all unlawfully awarded. I was befuddled that such flagrant disregard for the law and the basic principles of accountability can be committed by those who held themselves out to the world, merely months ago, as the czars of transparency and good governance. But then my learned friend, Mr Raphael Trotman, spoke and placed the matter in perspective. Speaking about the wind-farm project to which I referred above and the role the company played in the acquisition of AFC headquarters, he said that businessmen make investments in political parties and expect a return on their investments. If Mr Trotman has expressed the philosophy of his government, then, clearly, there is no role for public procurement.
However, the canons of transparency and accountability would at least demand that the government forthwith disclose the names of all those who have ‘invested’ in the APNU+AFC; the value of their ‘investments’; the contemplated rate of return on those investments, and how these returns are to be realised.
After all, it is public funds which will be utilised to pay back these investments.
Yours faithfully,
Anil Nandlall, MP
