The political issue which has been eating up column inches in the nation’s newspapers over the past few weeks relates to proposed legislation rejoicing in the somewhat cumbersome title of ‘The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering of Financing of Terrorism (Amendment) Bill.’ As the word ‘Amendment’ signifies, it is not the first piece of legislation on this subject in this country, it is just that the law in its current incarnation is defective and has not really been implemented, hence the need for revision.
The problem for the government is that this is not just an internal matter. Guyana is a member of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF), which is not an organization with which the vast majority of Guyanese are likely to be familiar. It comprises Caribbean Basin countries which have agreed to adopt common measures against money laundering and have signed on to a Memorandum of Understanding committing them, among other things, to implement 19 recommendations made by the CFATF, and 40 recommendations made by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – another international entity not immediately recognizable to most Guyanese. The FATF (dominated by the Western countries) comprises 32 members and two organizations ‒ one of which is the European Union ‒ that promote the effective implementation of legal and other measures to counter money laundering and terrorism financing.
The difference between the CFATF and most other international organizations is that it has teeth. Caribbean countries which do not implement some defined recommendations, can go onto a watch list for a specified period, and if that does not produce the desired effect, they can be sanctioned. And Guyana has reached a point where it is under threat of sanction unless it passes the bill mentioned above before a plenary meeting of the CFATF is held in Nicaragua beginning on May 27th. Those sanctions could have implications not just for the economy, but for our financial institutions and individual Guyanese as well, although economic commentators are not in complete agreement about the full consequences. Suffice it to say, however, that they presumably will be serious.
Since we are committed to the CFATF, and since the government knew what had to be done almost a year ago, how on earth, Guyanese will want to know, did we get ourselves in this situation? The short answer to that question appears to be rank incompetence on the part of the government. They dillied and they dallied and then turned up all hot and sweaty to table the bill in Parliament on April 22nd, expecting the opposition would give it express treatment.
But to paraphrase Robert Burns, the best laid schemes of mice, men and Guyanese politicians “gang aft agley” [often go awry]. And so it was in this instance, the government discovering that the opposition was not prepared to operate according to its schedule, opting instead to send the bill to select committee on May 7. That was not all. At a news conference on May 15, AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan said his party would not support the government’s amendments to the present law until the Public Procurement Commission was established and the President reviewed his veto of the two opposition bills.
“Shamelessly irresponsible,” the Finance Minister expostulated when he learnt of it, going on to tell Gina that he was shocked and horrified that the AFC would “hold the nation… hostage by using support for this bill as leverage to extract political concessions.” One wonders why he would be so shocked and horrified, when doing deals under these kinds of circumstances is quite the norm in other democratic jurisdictions – the US being a case in point. At the very least his remarks supply further evidence, if any were needed, that the PPP/C is for the most part incapable of compromising, which is the genesis of not a few of its troubles.
There were further twists in the storyline when APNU, the main opposition party withdrew from the work of the select committee over the failure of President Ramotar to share correspondence from the CFATF in which it advised it be circulated to all stakeholders, including the opposition. The Head of State rushed to “apologise for any slight imagined,” and assured Mr Granger that “it was never intended.” President Ramotar also took the unusual step of appealing directly to parliamentarians to put “country above partisan interests,” but while APNU has returned to the select committee, that has not prevented the opposition from recently setting the next date for the meeting of the committee as June 12 – outside the deadline. Their position was expressed pithily by Mr Granger who simply said, “We will not be rushed.”
The government is left now to dispatch Attorney General Anil Nandlall to Nicaragua to ask for an extension of the deadline. No doubt he will wax lyrical on the subject of why this is all the fault of the opposition, a good deal less than a truthful allegation if he makes it. If, as seems to have been the case, the onus was on the government to consult with other stakeholders and it instead sought to railroad the amendments through the House at the last minute, then its allegations against the opposition of implied lack of patriotism are also improper and misplaced. The administration clearly did not put ‘country first’ when it wasted almost a year before bringing the bill to the National Assembly so there was no time to properly discuss it.
The Private Sector Commission chose to speak out, echoing the government, for which it was roundly rebuked by the AFC which pointed to its silence on the establishment of the Public Procurement Commission. In an attempt to redeem itself, the PSC on Friday exhorted the government and the opposition to “respect the national interest” and convene an extra-parliamentary meeting to break the impasse on the establishment of the Public Procurement Commission, the Integrity Commission and the Ombudsman. The opposition has indicated that it is in favour of this, but as we reported yesterday, Presidential Advisor on Governance Gail Teixeira said that the government wanted an amendment to the Procurement Act to preserve the role of Cabinet in state contracts. In other words, the government does not want to release its stranglehold on who should receive public contracts. So much for respect for the national interest.
The story of the failure to set up the Procurement Commission was lucidly explained by Mr Ralph Ramkarran in a column in this newspaper on January 27 this year. In brief, the constitution requires that the Public Accounts Committee nominate the five members who then have to be approved by a two-thirds vote of the National Assembly. In the days when the PNCR was in the minority, said Mr Ramkarran, it had insisted that there had to be unanimity on the members; now that the boot is on the other foot, it is the PPP/C which is insisting on applying a unanimity principle – a sure-fire way in our context of ensuring that no commission would be appointed. In addition, the government had said at one stage that appointing the procurement body was not a priority.
The matter of the procurement commission is not entirely unrelated to the objectives of the anti-money laundering amendment bill in so far as a larger context of corruption is an invitation to money-launderers, etc, and the absence of the commission facilitates corruption. Since the PPP/C has set its face against the commission, the AFC could hardly be condemned for seizing the only opportunity which has presented itself since the last election to corner the government into a deal. The party’s demands on the rejected opposition bills would have to have been dropped for a variety of reasons, but the Public Procurement Commission is a constitutional body over which the government is digging in its heels simply because it cannot control it. The AFC’s problem was, however, that APNU did not appear to wish to operate in tandem with it.
The AG with his customary immoderate language is tossing terms such as “anti-nationalistic” around in relation to the opposition; how would he describe his party’s approach to the Public Procurement Commission?
