The strengthening of Guyana’s integrity legislation is critical as this country gears up to produce an estimated 100, 000 barrels of oil per day as early as 2020.In delivering the keynote address during the launch of the Guyana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Multi-Stakeholder Group (G-EITI-MSG) on Wednesday at the Umana Yana, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo said the integrity legislation needs to be amended to allow the chairman of the Integrity Commission to be appointed based on a process of consultation and political diktat.
The Integrity Commission Act, which makes provision for the establishment of an Integrity Commission, mandates that public officers disclose their financial assets and liabilities on or before June 30, each year. When a public officer ceases to be a person in public life, he or she is required to disclose his or her assets and liabilities to the commission within 30 days from the date that individual ceased to be a person in public life.
However, it has been approximately 11 years since the Integrity Commission has been without a chairman. The last chairman, Bishop Randolph George, resigned in 2006.
“It was beheaded and it remains headless to this day. We need a process by which we could have this important body reconstituted and perform the functions for which it had been established to ensure that we don’t have officials and others associated with officials, interested persons benefitting from disproportionate wealth, benefitting from ill-gotten or unjust enrichment,” Prime Minister Nagamootoo said.
He noted that these misappropriations often surface when a country begins to benefit significantly from the Extractive Industries, such as the oil and gas industry.
“When you look at that, you also see that there is temptation for those who would have access to personnel and to offices and to companies…You have to insulate them from dipping their dirty fingers into the cookie jar,” the prime minister added, while he emphasised the need to strengthen the integrity legislation.
Cognisant of the issues surrounding the integrity of office bearers, the prime minister said he has already submitted to Cabinet a menu of amendments to be made to the Integrity Commission Act for consideration. He noted the importance of having a Code of Conduct in place for office-holders to protect them from being contaminated.
Additionally, in alluding to the “Dutch Disease” and the “Resource Curse,” which have befallen countries that either depended on a single natural source of wealth or became corrupted as a result of a natural source of wealth, Prime Minister Nagamootoo said Guyana should remain committed to upholding not only its democratic values, but also a clean system of governance.
“The system of governance must be a system that is clean at the level of Government, at the level of the judiciary, and at the level of the legislature, and at the level of all other institutions of the democratic state,” he stated.
It was on this note that the prime minister spoke of the importance of constitutional reform, pointing out that though it is a difficult process, it is very critical.
“In 1980, we were all excited by the process of constitutional reform, and though we fought for a better constitution in post-independent Guyana, and post-republican Guyana, we found that some of the changes in the 1980 Constitution had placed some of the advocates of reform against those very changes,” he recalled.
The prime minister said some of the features embedded in the 1980 Constitution, which have saddled the system, will be very difficult to remove.
“Shades of authoritarianism and executive abuse have been entrenched and are not going to be easy to be removed, so for those who think that constitutional reform is a slogan, or that it could be achieved easily, our own history shows that it is a fight, that it is a struggle,” he emphasised.
As such, he said it was important for Government to be guided by a Constitutional Reform Steering Committee that will effectively map out the scope of the intended reforms. That committee, which is headed by Attorney-at-Law Nigel Hughes, has already submitted its report with key recommendations.
“I am serious about constitutional reform, because it is going to become the bedrock upon which we build all these lofty edifices like G- EITI (Guyana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative ) upon which the MSG (Multi-Stakeholder Group) will mount its monitoring, evaluating and advising on how our extractive industries could best serve our society.”
He had also used the opportunity to express gratitude to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the support offered in providing much- needed expertise as the process of constitutional reform continues.