HOME Affairs Minister Clement Rohee believes that A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) was merely looking for an excuse to pull out of the Special Select Committee that is tasked with dealing with the amendments to Guyana’s Money Laundering laws.

Minister Rohee, who is a member of the Special Select Committee, yesterday informed members of the media that the reasons proffered by APNU does not hold water but rather he believes the pull out is linked to a host of other issues.
APNU’s point man on Finance, Carl Greenidge, in an invited comment yesterday, told the Guyana Chronicle that while he was not present at Monday’s meeting APNU had been informed, that the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force had written to Head of State President Donald Ramotar indicating that the review was imminent along with a number of obligations that Guyana would have had to be undertaken.
Greenidge explained that the letter by the Regional body had asked that all stakeholders be involved and that the letter be circulated to the Opposition.
This, he said, was not done until this past week despite the fact that the President had received the letter in early April.
Leader of the Parliamentary Opposition Brigadier (rtd) David Granger subsequently requested an explanation from President Ramotar as to why the letter had not been shared earlier with the Opposition members.
At Monday’s meeting of the Special Select Committee the President’s explanation had not been forthcoming and as such the opposition APNU decided to pull out of the process.
The Chronicle has since been reliably informed that President Ramotar, yesterday, supplied the clarifications to APNU and Opposition Leader David Granger.
Rohee, however, maintained that the letter that has been referred to by the political Opposition is merely a smokescreen.
“APNU was looking for an excuse which they eventually found in the letter,” said Minister Rohee.
He reminded that the Opposition does not chair the Select Committee and while the Opposition would have made a number of requests, government has acceded to all.
The Minister with responsibility for National Security also told reporters that while the Alliance for Change (AFC) would have been “brazen” in its pronouncements on the Money Laundering laws along with its demands this was not the case with the APNU that had merely been looking for an excuse.
“I think that letter issue was used as an excuse to pull out…it’s not the letter it’s a host of other matters,” said Rohee, as he maintains that the Opposition has been looking all along for a pretext to pull out of their obligations to the Committee meetings.
The Minister told reporters that the arguments put forward by the Committee Chairperson in the person of Government’s Chief Whip Gail Teixeira, Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh and Attorney General Anil Nandlall were very convincing.
He reminded that all of the documents that had been referred to by the Opposition had been supplied, “every single document they asked for.”
Rohee said the fact is that Government has been pressing for more meetings and had indicated its willingness to work every day but the combined opposition had been opposed to this.