At a wide-ranging press conference on Friday, Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo disclosed that the state had decided to settle several significant cases brought against well-known businessmen as they had apparently been unsuspectingly drawn into the transactions in question.
The transactions related to the Head of Cevons Waste Management, Morse Archer; Car Care Enterprise owner, Wilfred Brandford and Courtney Benn, the principal of Courtney Benn Contracting Services. The first two had acquired land which the government was of the view had been obtained at a low price and illicitly via the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission (GLSC) while Mr Benn faces a number of lawsuits over incomplete construction projects.
In a matter-of-the-fact manner, the Vice President said: “We have reached an agreement with Cevons with that project and we will move forward on that, and similarly with Car Care, we have reached an agreement with that entity so that they don’t have to face court matters…we also reached agreement with Courtney Benn”.
He added: “The State will not pursue any legal action against these individuals” and then went on to say that government doesn’t “want to penalize unsuspecting businessmen” but will go “after the people who acted illegally.”
How the Vice President and the government for that matter go about divining an “unsuspecting” businessman from one who acts with deliberateness will be of great interest to the public. Did the businessmen in question fall into trances or had momentary brain freezes while entering the transactions? If this method of distilling the unsuspecting from the suspecting was to be proven to operate proficiently the elixir could be applied to all manner of Gordian Knots that crop up here and there. Unfortunately, there is unlikely to be any science to this matter of determining who was “unsuspecting” and who was not. It is much more likely to be an arbitrary process founded significantly on who knows who, who can be of use to the decision-makers and where political allegiances lie. Can anyone with a claim to being “unsuspecting” apply for this consideration? Perhaps the proprietor of BK International, for instance, or others who are not known be in the government’s good books at this point?
In the main, established businessmen do not expend large sums without being aware of exactly what they are buying into. The Guyana milieu has produced a cadre of hard-nosed businessmen who know what they are fully about and operate in said manner.
This government has to be exceedingly careful not to undermine the fundamental tenets of the rule of the law and equitability in governance. First, several of these cases have been lodged in court and serious issues have been raised including gross and deliberate undervaluing of lands and whether the GLSC and its principals acted illegally. In Mr Benn’s case persistent and severe failures to complete projects were alleged and he was of course a large beneficiary of projects under the previous PPP/C administration. There was also a damning Maritime Administration Department internal audit pertaining to his company. Surely it would have been the best course of action for these matters to be ventilated in court and not be short-circuited by the government.
As it is, the main target of the government’s actions in the land matters is the former GLSC Commissioner Trevor Benn while those who have been partners in the transactions have been arbitrarily excused and will be allowed to settle. Good governance requires that the government conduct all of its business in a manner that is transparent and evenhanded across the board. It cannot arbitrarily distinguish who might have made a good faith error from who acted wittingly. And who in the government is making these decisions? Is it the President, the Vice President, the Attorney General, the Minister of Agriculture? All of the preceding or more? How does one qualify to be in this rarefied group?
The government has already inexcusably tried to cover the environmental crime of the devastation of a large acreage of protected mangroves on the West Demerara by a company headed by an overseas-based Guyanese. So who is to decide from here on whether any company in this country can despoil the environment on the grounds that the development of the country demands it? Might this include river banks being destroyed in the quest for a gold strike or a mountain defiled in the hunt for diamonds?
The PPP/C government is proceeding recklessly in this manner as underlined by its earlier sanctifying of the opaque distribution of two trawling licences to an unknown operator to the possible detriment of sustainable fishing. These acts exhibit an intent to violate norms of good governance and there is nothing “unsuspecting” about that.
