SECRETARY to the Cabinet, Dr Roger Luncheon yesterday said it is Cabinet’s contention that the opposition’s actions with regards to the non-passage of the Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Bill are clearly intended to hurt Guyana and its national interests. “And it is obvious that, that hurt is to be spread indiscriminately,” Luncheon said at his weekly post-Cabinet press briefing at the Office of the President in Georgetown.

“Their strategic objective, it seems, is Guyana and its future and it would seem also that they are prepared to destroy Guyana in their efforts to remove the People’s Progressive Party from office. No doubt a reminder of what took place in the 1960s.”
Last November 7, Luncheon said, the opposition political parties dealt their latest blow to Guyana’s development, not contented with their earlier “dastardly” assault on the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project.
Ignoring its impact on the business and standard of living of Guyanese, he observed that APNU and AFC have taken their “anti-Guyana practices” to unprecedented heights, this time with the rejection of the AML/CFT.
Warnings and disclosures were provided about the consequences and the immediacy of the impact of the failure to enact the AML/CFT. “The Opposition has opted to disregard those warnings and disclosures. They have chosen to disregard the interests repeatedly expressed and displayed by the broadest possible cross-section of Guyanese,” said Luncheon.
“Already, they have resorted to the blame game. Their apologists are being recruited to defend the indefensible. We are now told by one Lincoln Lewis that what happened and what will happen is the price that Guyana will have to pay.
“The irony of all this is that up to today, APNU has not provided nor published anywhere their specific amendments to the bill, their specific objections to the current CFATF provisions in the bill, endorsed by CFATF incidentally, or have they submitted additional provisions that exist in anti-money laundering laws in other jurisdictions.
“Neither the Parliamentary Special Select Committee, the House, the stakeholders, nor the Guyanese people, were privy to this secret of APNU that one would have to believe was of such profundity that it would have caused them to reject the enactment of the bill,” Luncheon said.

(By Telesha Ramnarine)