Georgetown, Guyana.
July 15, 2022
For immediate release to all media houses.
AFC’s Press Release on developments concerning probe into allegations by Vice Pesident by Vice News.
The AFC notes a perverse barefacedness about Jagdeo’s support for a probe. What else could he say? This is the presumptuous and cavalier answer he, like everyone who is caught red-handed, would respond with. But it is the manner with which he shrugs it off. It does not bear down profoundly on him that wrong was done, even if by having the people at his home. He deems it to be just fine. An ethical public figure will have offered some modicum of apology to the Guyanese people. But no, just arrogance and invincibility!
As presently advised, the AFC will not be comfortable with a probe that is conducted by the Police knowing how they performed in the recent Quinton Bacchus matter, and for a number of other reasons. So, too, even one which comprises of local commissioners. The AFC remember the one in which the “Phantom Squad” and certain other public officials were being inquired into in an early 2000 PPP administration, where the final report was characterised thus, The shame is greater than the exoneration, by myself.
The AFC believes that since the World Bank has an investigative arm and the World Bank has serious people who know how to investigate corruption, and that unit of the Bank knows what to recommend to be done, President Irfaan Ally should call on the World Bank to probe this matter. It will save the country monies, too, for a costly commission of inquiry and a certainly questioned Report which will be found unacceptable by half the population.
If the President does not want the World Bank to investigate, then the alternative route the AFC will want is an international, reputable set of commissioners.
On the question whether VC Jagdeo remains in office while the probe is being conducted, Absolutely not! What is good for the goose must be good for the gander. If it was any other person who were to be probed like this, that person would have been interdicted from office, he had to move out from that office or position. It is also the politically correct thing, or ethical thing to do.
Whether it be World Bank or an internationally flavoured COI, A comprehensive set of recommendations which will address systemic corruption in Guyana is what the AFC will look for. Also, recommendations which will mark red-lines not to be crossed by politicians; or if crossed, must mean criminality. Conduct as was here practiced by VC Jagdeo, if practiced by a Judge would have meant dismissal and a jail term. Just think of it…what he Jagdeo would have said about that Judge. So a probe ought to spell out for us how the affairs of the nation must be carried out by politicians, so that pall which has fallen over public integrity must not be continued. The probe should also tell us the damaging effects and corrosive impact which occur when implicit blessing is given to such political practices, and the need for a more robust public outrage whenever they occur.
On the question of President Ally going only after investors who utilise middlemen, the AFC sees this as avoidance and evasion of the main issue. This is strategy only to perpetuate corruption in high places. It is hard to chase or convict bad guys when you are babysitting the Boss. Why go after the small fry like “investors or middlemen” when the entire corrupt scheme could be disfigured and discontinued by displacing the Boss! In a triangular affair as this the better policy is to criminalise the practices of that unwholsome politics of the Boss….who make friends with the Su s of the world and then give them access to meet them at his home and then tells them I will look after the Government side, Su will look after the Agreement. The AFC urges the President to go after the shark, not the small fry.
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