IF THERE remains an enlightened sense of patriotism to Guyana, despite their persistent virulent anti-national demonstrations in and out of parliament—latest manifestations being the shameful chopping of the 2014 national budget-then the hope is that with this weekend’s meeting involving key personnel of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF), the APNU/AFC Opposition coalition have a most appropriate and timely opportunity for doing just that-in Guyana’s best interest.While we are not unmindful of some of the criticisms often made of the FATF, the reality is that it functions as a crucial inter-governmental body, now in its 25th year, in helping to ensure required legal conformity to avoid the evils of money laundering, financing of terrorism and other threats to the international financial system.
For its part the CFATF has been quite forthcoming in its efforts to help Guyana in overcoming obstacles to avoid being “blacklisted” as a defaulter on required compliance for international financial regulations that are acceptable also to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The Guyana Government is on record, as is known to previous representatives of the CFATF who have visited Guyana, and by extension, the FATF itself, as having secured widespread national support for the relevant legislation that it needs to have approved by parliament—namely the “Anti-Money Laundering and Countering of the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Bill.
This support have been varyingly repeated by major representative sectors of Guyana, not the least being the country’s trade and investment development partners; leading trade unions with identifiable mass support, as well as other non-governmental organisations.
Now, in accordance with the supportive sentiment much earlier expressed by CARICOM’s Secretary General Irwin Larocque, in urging bi-partisan commitment to ensure Guyana’s parliamentary approval of the required provisions in the AML/CFT Bill, a specific offer of help has come from Jamaica. It is a Community partner state that’s quite experienced from its own domestic political and economic travails, with the policies and functions of the CFATF and, of course, the FATF itself.
Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Portia Simpson-Miller, has made clear in a letter to Guyana, her government’s commitment to help in any way possible for securing parliament’s approval of the required AML/CFT bill. Public disclosure of this has significantly coincided with the report of this weekend’s visit to Guyana by chairperson of the CFATF, Allyson Maynard-Gibson, the Attorney General of The Bahamas, and also the body’s Executive Director, Calvin Wilson.
They have come prepared to tell it like it is—in Guyana’s interest—why it is high time that bi-partisan political cooperation should trump stubborn Opposition politics for passage of the AML/CFT bill.
Will it happen? We anxiously await the outcome, knowing that one hand can’t clap. The dos and donts that stand as current barriers to a required agreement, acceptable, in the final analysis by the CFATF, must be seriously addressed by some new thinking by those representing the Government and the Opposition.
Let there be a triumph for the sake of Guyana. This nation has already suffered immense costly financial and economic woes as a direct result of the APNU/AFC brand of what passes for “Opposition politics”.