The recent outburst of fretfulness by the World Bank over what it says is the problem of governments seeking to “unfairly determine the winners of government contracts, with awards favouring friends, relatives, or business associates of government officials” (and which is reported in this issue of the Stabroek Business), came shortly before a revelation emanating from the Office of the Auditor General here in Guyana regarding a particularly outrageous instance of seeming manipulation of the state tender process in a manner that appeared to bend over backwards in favour of an un-named contractor. No less shocking than the occurrence itself was the fact that the subject minister in the matter at hand, Education Minister Priya Manickchand, appeared to openly concede that the slew of irregularities outlined in the AG’s report had indeed occurred. Astoundingly, she then rejoined that there was an explanation for what, in fact, were open and shut instances of outrageous manipulation of the tender process. Some of the details of that matter were also the subject of an editorial in the December 29 issue of the Stabroek News.
Stabroek Business’ persistence in its reportage on this issue derives from a particular concern that insofar as the matter of the management of the public purse is concerned we are almost certainly approaching an important fork in the road.
Not a great deal appears to have happened over the years to curb the propensity by government to behave in a manner which suggests that the holding of office affords the office holder unfettered right of unimpeded access to the public treasury, even though, in the instance of Guyana, domestic as well as global circumstances ought to cause government to understand that (to employ a time-worn Guyanese colloquialism), ‘dis time nah lang time’.
As the President of the CDB put it at the aforementioned December 7 Bank forum, the contemporary imperative of accountability in the management of state funds here in the region derives from the fact that, now, perhaps more than ever before, resources allocated to the region are linked to the execution of missions of a critical nature, the ravages of the impact of climate change, in this particular instance. It was a message which the CDB President intended that the region take seriously.
In the singular instance of Guyana, the need to ‘ring fence’ our assets derived from the oil and gas sector against plunder by officialdom has been a matter of robust public discourse ever since the earliest oil discovery disclosures were made back in 2015. It would, frankly, be eminently fair to state that the seeming surfeit of public worry was and still is linked to a mistrust of what, all too frequently, are those convoluted procedures that often depart sharply from clearly laid-down rules in the administering of the public purse. Indeed, it would hardly be unfair to state that public opinion on the governance process in Guyana as a whole, has, for many years, been informed by considerations that have to do with what is believed to be a lack of uprightness and transparency in the administering of the public purse. The repeated revelations of the Auditor General on the matter of what, consistently, are the outrageous anomalies in the administering of public purse tell their own shocking stories.
The line of logic that resonates continually in what has become the persistent expressions of public concern is that, going forward, and unless the integrity of the governance process can be relied upon to a much greater extent than is the case at this time, the more resources that become ‘available to the state, the greater the likelihood of disbursement in a manner that departs from lawfulness. Here it should be noted that the above-mentioned precedent eminently makes the point that the elaborate ‘iron gate’ structures that have, historically, been ‘erected’ by governments, ostensibly to stave off the unlawful diversions rarely if ever seem to stem the flow of sudden, ill-explained enrichment of state functionaries.
One feels, unfortunately, that Guyana may be particularly vulnerable in this regard, though we assert somewhat tongue in cheek, frankly, that hopefully, history will prove us wrong.
