Dear Editor,
After reading your article, ‘Jamaican Contractor General corruption fight drew US admiration – cable,’ (June 17), I couldn’t help wondering what the Wikileaks cables on information from the US Embassy in Georgetown to Washington have to say about the fight by any Guyana government official against corruption.
Perhaps the now humdrum Auditor General’s annual reports, which merely highlight with troubling consistency numerous glaring financial irregularities, are about the closest any government official gets to talking about corruption. But as far as making conscientious efforts to eradicate this now endemic scourge is concerned, I don’t know whether the Auditor General’s constitutional responsibilities extend to taking legal action.
In previous letters, I did reference the action taken in November 2009 by then US Ambassa-dor to Kenya, Mr Michael Rannenberger, against that country’s Attorney General, Mr Sitswila Amos Wako, by revoking his US visa for failing to aggressively tackle the corruption crisis plaguing his government.
One news report (UPIU.com) stated that the United States had been urging the Kenyan government to accelerate the pace of reforms and to address the issues of corruption and police brutality. America had also called for the implementation of reforms agreed upon when Kenya’s coalition government was formed in 2008. Mr Wakos, who had been attorney general since 1991, serving Presidents Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki, became the target of Washington’s focus after careful observations, but especially since 2003, when three investigations cited the attorney general’s office for delaying the execution of reform policies and for not dealing with election-related violence.
Even the UN Special Rappaorteur, Mr Philip Alston, added his voice to the need for changes. “The resignation of the attorney general is an essential first step to restoring the integrity of the office and ending its role in promoting impunity in Kenya,” Alston said in his report. “In order to ensure independent prosecutions, the prosecutorial powers held by the attorney general should be removed, and an independent department of public prosecution created.”
One week before Mr Wako’s visa was revoked, US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Jonnie Carson, had visited Kenya and obliquely mentioned a ban was pending because Mr Wako wielded tremendous influence and often engaged in international travel. So, in keeping with the Obama administration’s decision to ban entry for officials in the Kenyan government who are deemed obstacles to reforms, Mr Wakos’s visa was revoked. President Kibaki joined him in protesting the action, but Mr Wakos even went one step further and filed a law suit against Washington for defamation of character.
I rehashed all of that to ask this pertinent question: When will the US Embassy in Georgetown take similar action against government officials in Guyana who, by commission or omission, are aiding and abetting the malignant spread of the disease of corruption? These officials wield influence and engage in international travel, including to the United States. I don’t think there is any government official in Guyana who would ever think of resigning because of corruption allegations, and that is why the Kenya case serves as a useful example of why the revocation of visas for suspected involvement in drugs cannot be the only means of getting government officials to toe the line.
If the US Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica can praise that country’s Contractor General for his fierce anti-corruption stance, then what do the cables from the US Embassy in Georgetown tell Washington about the Jagdeo regime’s anti-corruption stance?
With your kind permission, Editor, I would just like to go off at a tangent a bit to say that when Ambassador Rannenberger’s tour of duty ended in Kenya in April this year, he made some interesting observations that sound strikingly close to home. According to Bloomberg News, accusations of vote-rigging in the December 2007 presidential poll were said to have triggered ethnic clashes in East Africa’s biggest economy that left 1,500 people dead and forced another 300,000 to flee from their homes. Calm prevailed after President Mwai Kibaki, a member of the Kikuyu, the largest of the tribes, signed a power-sharing accord with Raila Odinga, an ethnic Luo who was installed in the newly created position of prime minister.
Rannenberger, for his part, said discontent over Kenya’s “culture of [eaders’] impunity, negative ethnicity and pervasive poverty” were what spurred the last post-election violence, and that Kenya must accelerate political reforms to address these three issues. “Despite the reforms that have been carried out, despite having the new constitution, the fact of the matter is that those three central issues still exist,” and “unless they are dealt with by 2012 then there is going to be a chance of trouble.”
Rannenberger also called on Kenyan leaders to listen to their citizens’ desire for change and remove obstacles to reforms. Kenya must appoint a new chief justice, a director of public prosecutions and an attorney general, reorganize its judiciary and police and establish a Supreme Court under a new constitution established in August. Rings a bell?
Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court is scheduled to begin hearings in September to determine whether six Kenyans, including Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, accused of masterminding the unrest, should stand trial on proposed charges of crimes against humanity.
At the moment it appears as though the US Embassy in Georgetown is Guyana’s only hope for a change from a culture of plunder, pervasive poverty and petty partisan politics. Sometimes I wonder if Mr Robert Corbin called off his party’s street protests because of pressure from the US Embassy.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
