At the very best, it could have been said that the standoff between the opposition and the government, since the last elections of November 2011, was not doing the country any good. We would have ignored the damage wrought by the opposition’s intemperate response in Linden to the government’s proposal to equalise the electricity tariffs to that of the rest of the country.
But after the ruling by the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF), in the wake of the opposition’s refusal to approve the required legislation for compliance, its Anti- Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AMLCTF) recommendations, the standoff is actually now doing harm to the country in ways that can prove fatal.
Our financial system just does not have the resilience to withstand the level of scrutiny to which it will now be subjected. But it is the posture of the opposition in executing its agenda that signals that the crisis will worsen rather than recede.
The legislation in question concerned an issue that the opposition itself had long complained about – money laundering. In fact, an executive of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), a member of the larger member of the opposition, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), had for years been writing on it and the attendant dangers it posed to our state.
Secondly, Guyana was not the first Caribbean state to have been asked by CFATF to modify its legislative regime to deal with the new contingencies in this area. Trinidad, for one, had actually been cited and then forced to comply. The legislation, then, had the imprimatur of CFATF, which was working on behalf of the global Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and which had examined the Guyanese efforts since 2009 before making its recommendations.
The process was an ongoing one, with FATF issuing reports three times annually to alert member states on its latest assessment of compliance of countries. APNU, therefore, was being disingenuous, when it callously stated it needed more time to “check with its stakeholders” even as the deadline was breached and sanctions imposed.
Whatever additional measures its “stakeholders” might have decided were necessary could have been tabled subsequently and be enacted using the parliamentary majority it commands, courtesy of the Alliance For Change (AFC). The refusal of its members on the Special Select Committee reviewing the legislation to attend meetings confirms that APNU was essentially filibustering, to ensure the legislation would remain in limbo and Guyana receive sanctions.
The position of the minor opposition party, AFC, was just as callous to the country’s need of the hour. This party did not even deign to pretend that it had any substantive problems with the legislation: it simply demanded a quid pro quo.
If the government would drop its demand for a Cabinet “no-objection” role to the Public Procurement Commission (PPC), it would support the legislation. It was as coldly calculating as that. The two issues were totally unrelated, save by the opportunism of the AFC. At the first sitting of Parliament the day after the CFATF’s sanctions on the country were announced, the combined opposition uttered not a word of remorse for the predicament into which they had catapulted the country.
Instead they proceeded blithely to propose an action which is expressly forbidden them by the Constitution – to initiate legislation that would lay charges on the Consolidated Fund. They passed a motion to establish a “Veterans’ Commission” that would do just that.
It is obvious that the opposition has become increasingly emboldened by the one-seat majority it has in the National Assembly and will definitely, through acts of omission (as on AMLCFT) or commission ( Veterans’ Commission) not only try to usurp the prerogative of the executive, but actually harm the country.
The government of the day must not permit this state of affairs to continue a day longer. It must announce forthwith a date for new general elections.
