The PPP/C could not for one moment have thought that it would have been politically where it is today when it took the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) (Amendment) Bill to parliament on 7th May 2013. Its dilatoriness over this matter, normal intransigence in governance and heavy reliance on propaganda have now taken the negotiations over the Bill into a cul-de-sac from which it can only emerge with a complete turnaround and in which one of the parties must lose an enormous amount of face. Indeed, the quarrel over this Bill is a classic case of the negative unintended consequences that usually flow from tardiness and/or the adoption of wrong/amoral policies.
The PPP/C’s problem began with its own procrastination: after all Guyana became a member of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) in 2002; the FIU was created in late 2003 to monitor and apprehend businesses and individuals involved in money laundering (but the less said about this institution the better!); the first country evaluation that spoke to the absence of money laundering legislation came in 2006; the
