Stressing that a country’s natural resources do not belong to politicians, leader of Suriname’s Progressive Reform Party, Chandrikapersad Santokhi says that wealth management should be assigned to independent authorities or commissions and the populace must be able to benefit directly from the monies generated.
“The wealth belongs to the people who should benefit from these resources directly…The people must not only see the wealth coming in but also feel it in their pockets and in a positive impact on their lives,” Santokhi said at the seventh fund-raising dinner for the Transparency Institute Guyana Inc (TIGI) held on Saturday at the Pegasus Hotel.
In delivering a feature address on the “Regulatory and government framework for managing wealth for the benefit of all,” Santokhi stressed on the need for wealth management using transparent and accountable structures and learning from the lessons of the past.
Noting that many of the existing laws were inherited from the colonial era, he said “I believe that when it comes to national wealth management skills and systems, the management should be assigned to independent authorities or commissions. This will in itself add to transparency and accountability goals that also prevent abuse.”
He added that the appropriate and regular reporting on assets and utilisation must be a critical part of open and transparent communication to the wider society. Santokhi, a former Minister of Justice and Police and former Police Commissioner in his country, emphasised that the wealth generated out of natural resources is not the property of any particular political party or government. His comments drew applause from the small gathering.
He used the opportunity to call for political will and the change in the mind-set to ensure that the future is bright and that there is progress in the maintenance of peace and stability.
To make this a reality, he said the fight against injustice, discrimination, corruption and nepotism and inefficiencies in the government structure must continue. He said that a peaceful, productive and tolerant society is “not something we inherit, nor is it God given or created for us by others. Leaders in society primarily create, the face, the image and substance of our societies. There, is an interplay between the kind of society we have and the kind of leaders such a society produces.”
In this regard, he urged that in response to the challenges of the past, “we need also to anticipate the opportunities of the future…creating a resilient and tolerant society that requires citizens who have …recognised the importance of basic norms and values,” while stressing on the importance of the family.
He also stressed on the importance of working collaboratively to foster solidarity, freedom to foster opinion without sanction, fight injustices and actively fight corruption. “If there is no political will, not much can happen,” he said while opining that there will be a need for a mind-set change to achieve the broad political support going forward.
Expressing the view that developing relevant laws is the next step, he said that once laws are in place the respective institutions involved in the execution and enforcement need to be strengthened. These he said includes the public prosecutions office, police department, financial, criminal and forensic institutions, parliamentary oversight committee and banking oversight agencies.
He reminded that when it comes to the corruption perceptions index, Suriname and Guyana as well as the sub region, are not doing so well. In 2018, he said Suriname was at the 43rd position, Guyana at 37th and Trinidad and Tobago at 41 out of 180 countries surveyed. “While a lot of progress has been made over the past decades the perception of our countries being corrupt is still there,” he said, adding that the results of the survey ought to be taken seriously. One way to create a better perception he said is to address the realities in our governance framework and political behaviour that obstruct development and growth.
“Political leaders need to change course in terms of their role and responsibility towards society,” he said.
Eventful 2018
Meanwhile, TIGI President Troy Thomas said that among the important developments in 2018 was the reactivation of the Integrity Commission. He pointed out that while this should be lauded, TIGI would like to see changes to the legislation that will pave the way for the declarations by the President and Leader of the Opposition being made public.
“We should at least do that and that will bring us on par with some of the practices we observe in the Caribbean and [in] countries such as Jamaica where they are pushing beyond that.”
Reminding that the commission was without a Chairman since 2006, Thomas told the gathering that the importance of this development is not only as it relates to declarations and disclosure of assets by public official but “it is also the avenue through which citizens can raise concerns about what may have taken place in the court of public officials’ executing their duties and having some way of it being addressed.”
He praised the commission for publishing the names of delinquent public officials before pointing out that declaring is an important issue regarding governance.
Public officials are required by law to declare their assets and liabilities, on or before June 30th each year. Late last year the commission began publishing the names of delinquent officials in the newspaper and the Official Gazette. Several lists have been published and the commission has complained of a low response rate. Legal action is currently being considered.
Thomas in his remarks said that the fight against corruption continues. He said that for 2018, there were seemingly “less scandals” compared to the previous year.
He described 2018 as eventful in that there were changes made to the legislative landscape which will have a long lasting impact on Guyana. These include the passage of the cybercrime legislation.
Thomas used the occasion to point out TIGI’s difficulty in accessing public information, noting that the appointed Com-missioner Charles Ramson Snr was fired. While noting that the institute has had problems over the years accessing public information, he said that the non-allocation of budgetary funds for 2019 appears to be a backward step. He also expressed satisfaction with the release of a green paper on the sovereign wealth fund which TIGI sees as a “very progressive” step which allowed experts to debate some of the provisions.
With regards to corruption, he expressed concern that to date no public official has been convicted although a number of forensic audits have been done and he pointed out that the proclivity for corruption “seems to have not been addressed tangibly so far.”
“Nobody has been convicted as a result of the findings of the forensic audits that were done post 2015 change in government,” he said before opining that optimism about the outcomes of those cases has been lost. The findings of those audits are currently the subject of criminal probes being conducted by the Special Organised Crime Unit.
“We need to see people who have been involved in corruption in public office, misconduct in the public office….they need to be sanctioned and we need to find ways to give effect to that,” he said.
He spoke of government’s failure to honour the promise of passing campaign financing legislation. “We are yet to see anything of the sort tabled….or drafted,” he said informing that he will highlight this very important issue at any forum he goes to.
“This seems so far to be a broken promise and I rather suspect that I will continue to refer to it as an outstanding issue for the government in relation to addressing corruption,” Thomas said.
The first annual dinner was held in 2012 when the guest speaker was Deryck Murray, then Head of the Transparency Institute (Trinidad and Tobago) and well-known wicket keeper when the West Indies was in its heyday.
Public security minister Khemraj Ramjattan was among those in attendance on Saturday.
