Declaring that it won’t be silenced, civil society group Article 13 yesterday registered strong disappointment over the government “rushing” the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) bill through Parliament and it also asserted that President Irfaan Ali has to be held accountable for the growing number of “constitutional violations of omissions and commission”.
Formed last year, Article 13 said in a statement it “considers it a duty to register, in the strongest possible terms, our disappointment at the undue haste with which the Government rushed through Parliament the Natural Resource Fund Act which opens the door for misuse and without regard for the Santiago Principles which set out the basic tenets of such Funds. We consider it a salutary lesson that Kazakhstan, whose model of Sovereign Wealth Fund was being considered as a potential influence for Guyana’s, is now experiencing unprecedented disturbances, loss of lives, looting of private property, destruction of public property, and orders by the President to domestic and invited Russian troops to shoot to kill protesters without warning”.
