PRESIDENT Donald Ramotar has disclosed that there has been no change with the deadlock between his administration and United States (US) officials with regard to implementation of the $300M USAID-funded Leadership and Democracy (LEAD) project.He told a press conference last Friday: “Things are more or less the same; we have not agreed with the project, and we are saying that the project should be halted.”
To date, the United States Embassy has made no public statement with regard to the project, and Government’s firm position on its implementation.
In a prior interview, Presidential Advisor on Governance, Ms Gail Teixeira, had said the current position of US officials is a departure from the usual bilateral relations existing between the two countries. She said, “The problem with the LEAD project is that it is a breach of the normal bilateral relations, as well as that the content has concerns for the Government — concerns which we expressed.
“This is the first time in 20 years that a project has not gone through that process. It has never happened between 1992 and 2012, and we are not agreeing to it because of the rejection of the Government’s participation.”
Teixeira questioned why the Government was not involved in the consultations on the project. She said the Guyana Government and the American Administration have worked together over the last decades on US-funded projects.
“It has always been a collaborative effort, in which we have agreed on a design of a project and the implementation of that project,” she said.
Referring to examples of the unchallenged implementation of projects that addressed the issue of democracy, Teixeira said: “I was part of other projects that dealt with democracy: the Consolidation of Democracy project, which ran from 2004 to 2006; and the more recent one, from 2009 to 2012, which dealt with trafficking in persons and violence against women and such.
In all of this, we sat with USAID and the US Embassy to consult on the project over several days, some several weeks, and we came to agreement and the projects were signed off.”
She therefore maintained that the Government’s position has been made clear, and remains unchanged in relation to the LEAD project.
“Were the LEAD project to have gone through the protocol over the last 20 years, we probably would have come to an agreement and fine-tuned the number of concerns we had, which we have had with other projects with USAID,” Teixeira said.
She said what was provided to Government was a “done deal”, rejected by Government primarily on that basis. “The main problem is the way in which the project is being implemented,” Teixeira reiterated. The project was not approved by Cabinet, and this was formally indicated to the relevant authorities on October 26, 2013.

(By Vanessa Narine)