Criminalising not helping need to examine NICIL role
HEAD of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS), Dr. Roger Luncheon said, yesterday, that Government has noted the attacks on National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) and efforts to criminalise its operations. Pointing out that questions have been generated in the context of the public discourse on NICIL, he said many of them that have arisen address disclosures that were made both by critics as well as management and their functionaries.
Luncheon was speaking at his post-Cabinet media briefing in Office of the President, Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, Georgetown.
He said: “The situation, again where NICIL is concerned, is not conducive to a proper examination of the issues” and asked how else can one characterise the “output, questions, assertions and statements” about NICIL, its accounts and transactions that are bandied around by critics.
Luncheon declared: “It is evident that the ways, in which NICIL is currently functioning, this is since its creation is not to the liking of the Parliamentary Opposition and I might go further, to other critics identified with the Parliamentary Opposition or otherwise.”
IMPERMISSIBLE
“What is impermissible, however, is the efforts to criminalise the actions of NICIL, the actions of NICIL management, the efforts to heap disrepute on NICIL and its discharge of its statutory obligations,” Luncheon said.
According to Luncheon: “There, obviously, is need for us, at the national level, to examine NICIL in its role as an organiser of public enterprises and an investment agency for the Central Government.
“But that discourse is not helped by making allegations or making it seem that the way it is being done is wrong, is criminally wrong and unacceptably wrong.”
He pointed out that governments have changed direction and reminded: “Governments, as in the case of NICIL, created bodies such as NICIL. Its creation arose in the context of a Government decision – a PNC (People’s National Congress) Government decision to have commanding heights of the economy; everything was controlled and, in essence, when the collapse came in the 1980s, there was a whole host of public-owned enterprises that were collapsing like ninepins around us.”
Luncheon, noting the context within which the entity was formed, said: “I don’t have any doubts that we are all aware, we are all convinced, circumstances are drastically different, much improved. I can’t remember when last we had a State corporation that has collapsed and a NICIL type instrument was necessary to either bail out, privatise or find some contingency to put in place.”
He went on: “Times have changed and the discourse as to what we need to do now, in the context of the current situation, cannot be informed and should not be informed by the level of, I don’t know other than to say speculation, scandalous assertions that are visited on a solution that was put in place in years gone.”
DYSFUNCTIONAL
“We have to treat our past, particularly those that have successfully allowed the transition from then to now. We have to treat it with respect, with dignity and I am afraid that the critics, both in the Opposition as well as in the general public, in the media have, certainly, adopted the most dysfunctional of approaches to address change,” Luncheon stated.
“Change, we assert, can best be brought about through studied, principled and more conventional approaches. This habit of tearing down without even considering how to erect, we have to move beyond that,” he insisted.
Luncheon said: “I will say this, on behalf of Cabinet, that, if these attacks on NICIL are aimed at providing the basis for change, for dragging us, for forcing us into change, I can assure you that they are destined for failure.”
Answering questions, he replied: “NICIL has been providing information and getting involved in the technical aspects of managing public enterprises and a willingness to report on its successes, willingness to report on its weaknesses and the areas that are of concern to Guyanese.
“I am happy that the opportunity is going to be presented at Parliament, as Mr. Ramjattan claims, steps have been put in place. I am just wondering whether the disregard for convention and disregard for principles that highlight the way it has been dealt with in this pre-parliamentary period, I am wondering whether that is what will be visited on the Members of Parliament (MPs) when Ramjattan and company square off against the PPP/C MPs, who would be with Brassington in responding to Ramjattan’s challenges,” he said.
TRANSPARENCY
In 2008, NICIL published a booklet on the transparency of all of its privatisation and the publication is being updated and will be issued very shortly.
For several weeks, NICIL has been facing intense criticisms and charges of corruption and other alleged malpractices by the Opposition. Recently, Alliance for Change (AFC) MP, Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan has made a string of attacks on the State-run holding company and its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr. Winston Brassington.
Amidst what it refuted as malicious, grossly exaggerated and wholly unsubstantiated claims, allegations and criticisms, including that of widespread corruption at NICIL, the Government, last Tuesday night, sought, again, to set the records straight and defend the entity, by way of broadcasting live a televised debate on the National Communications Network (NCN).
The forum was initiated by the Administration and invitations were extended to AFC Chairman, Ramjattan and MP Moses Nagamootoo; chartered accountant, Christopher Ram; Kaieteur News publisher, Glenn Lall and Editor-in-Chief, Adam Harris but Ramjattan and Nagamootoo did not attend.
The Government was represented on the programme by Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, NICIL Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr. Winston Brassington and Luncheon.