Dear Editor,
I wish to react to Mr Patrick Barker, who said in a recent letter (‘Van West Charles is not the man to lead the PNC or be president,’ SN May 16), that he did not support Dr Richard Van West Charles’s bid for PNC Leader and possibly as a President, simply because of Dr Charles’s past link with the autocratic Forbes Burnham regime.
At first blush it may seem understandable to readers given what we already know of the ignobility of that particular era, but Mr Barker has to come up with some stronger reasons than that, given that we now have a President who has also been behaving increasingly autocratically, and the current main parliamentary opposition party, the PNC, has not been doing its job of effectively holding the government’s feet to the fire on several issues.
And using Mr Barker’s rationale for denying support for Dr Van West Charles, would he not say based also on the increasing autocracy and extensive corruption associated with the government, that he does not support any current member of the administration or the PPP for leadership of this party or the presidency? This administration is not quite where the Burnham administration was at its peak of autocracy and corruption, but do we need to actually get there before we can make this distinction and offer public comments?
I am not a supporter of Dr Charles’s bid, but I don’t want to close the door too quickly on potential replacements for Mr Robert Corbin without first learning some details of their thinking on the issues of the day, because even though Mr Corbin has been an effective foot soldier of the PNC, he has been an ineffective general of the party, and as leader of the main parliamentary opposition, he receives a taxpayer-funded salary and benefits while the Jagdeo administration steamrolls its way on almost every issue.
This administration gets only token resistance from the PNC in the form of words issued via press releases and conferences, while the administration and PNC often appear to conveniently marginalize the AFC, which has its own work cut out trying to remain more than relevant.
For as long as the PNC continues in its role as main parliamentary opposition, with its leaders and MPs drawing down taxpayer-backed salaries/benefits, it owes the nation a responsibility to keep the administration in check. Winning the 2006 election was not a mandate for this administration to do whatever it likes; there has to be a firm checks and balances system, of which the parliamentary opposition is a vital component.
Here are four incidents, which, I think, have come to represent what is so wrong with this administration and needed the main parliamentary opposition’s firm reaction by rallying public outrage:
There is the Auditor-General’s Report for 2006, which contained several glaring cases of financial irregularities. One of the irregularities was related to an allocation to the Home Affairs Ministry in 2003 for the purchase of guns and ammunition, but which guns and ammunition the Auditor General found had not yet been delivered nor had the money been recovered.
The government’s failure to launch an official enquiry into the deaths of over 200 Guyanese during the crime spree era of 2002–2004, and the role of Roger Khan and the Phantom Squad and, based on accusations and insinuations, the role also of the PNC.
It remains a mystery that many alleged dangerous criminal elements were killed by the Joint Services and Phantom Squad members without any direct link to any mastermind to answer criminal charges in court.
Not even Mr Khan’s public admission of using his resources to assist the police moved the government to open an investigation into his confessed role here.
The government’s refusal to publicly question why the Director of Public Prosecu- tions dropped charges against a Fidelity official in the Fidelity-Polar beer scam, and even though the Auditor-General’s report did recommend charges be instituted against Fidelity officials, only employees of the GRA ended up being indicted.
This discrepancy follows hard on the heels of the President’s firing nine CANU officers, not for being charged with or guilty of any corruption-related crime, but for failing polygraph tests, which the government promised to extend system wide, but have since discontinued. The appearance is that the ordinary man is made to take the rap while the major players walk scot free.
And then there is the CLICO (GY) sandal, in which Guyanese lost US$34M due to a failure by CLICO (GY) to abide by Section 55 of the Insurance Act requiring insurance companies not to invest more than 15% of funds overseas, and due to a failure by the Office of the Commis-sioner of Insurance to apply punitive measures of Section 39 of the Insurance Act. On this issue alone, an effective parliamentary opposition should have been in the forefront of public outrage against the government for failing to do its job. Instead, the President successfully spun his way in and out of this huge loss by promising insurance policy-holders their claims will be honoured. Given the fact that the company violated the Insurance Act, did it violate any other laws? And is there a link between the Insurance Commissioner being shot and her functions being absorbed by the Bank of Guyana?
Like I said, those are only four of the many areas that an effective parliamentary opposition would have seized on to be out there galvanizing the support of that segment of society that does not agree with or support the actions or inactions of the administration.
And because I don’t believe in opposing for the sake of opposing, I think a good parliamentary opposition would know how to read the political tea leaves and when to take advantage of opportunities to whip up public outrage or harness such outrage to make demands of the administration to stop or change its pursuit of any action that a segment of the society disagrees with.
So, I have no qualms if Dr Charles can displace Mr Corbin as leader of the main parliamentary opposition, because even though I am a supporter of the AFC, there is way too much at stake for the PNC to be getting paid as the main parliamentary opposition to help keep the administration in check for me to wait for the AFC to become more politically potent.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
