During his time in office, former Finance Minister, Winston Jordan had commissioned a series of audits on State agencies to the tune of $133M. Among the entities audited were the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), the Guyana Gold Board (GCB) and the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL). These reports cited numerous instances of legal breaches but no one was ever sentenced to prison.
Six years after that forensic audit initiative commenced, Jordan confessed that he still could not say the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is corrupt without having a shred of evidence to support such claims.
The economist made this position known during a recent discussion via Globespan, an online platform that is chaired by selected members of the Guyanese Diaspora. Jordan was specifically asked about his take on corruption within society and if he believes that the governing party is corrupt.
The former Finance Minister said, “Corruption is a very corrosive aspect of development; it is like a cancer and it does not respect the good or bad parts of the body. It eats everything. If you don’t clip it out, unfortunately, it would grow back and unfortunately, Guyana has had a bad rap where corruption is concerned.”
He said from time to time, policy leaders endeavour to improve the regulatory and institutional environment “but who is going to police the system you put in place?”
Jordan said that oftentimes, the issue with corruption is that it is either the result of a system that does not work or that people staffed within oversight bodies refuse to ensure it works.
As to whether the PPP/C is corrupt, Jordan said, “I won’t go out on a limb as such because I don’t go about this practice of labeling people without evidence and until evidence is shown on a leg on which I can stand on, I don’t want to go out and say PNC is corrupt or PPP is corrupt or AFC is corrupt”.
Asked if any APNU members had breached any laws and was considered corrupt during his time, the former minister said, “I don’t know, the President at the time (David Granger) never intimated to any Cabinet members that he was aware or that he thinks they were corrupt or so on but that could only be answered by Granger who had a panoramic view of all of his ministers and their goings on. I tend to stay in my business, stick to my ministry and manage it in a professional manner and that is what I did.”
Jordan’s views on how endemic corruption is within the Guyanese society is not dissimilar to those proffered by civil society groups such as Article 13 and Transparency International Guyana Inc. (TIGI).
Former Speaker of the House, Ralph Ramkarran also spoke about this in his most recent column titled “Conversation Tree”. He recently wrote that the population of Guyana knows that corruption exists and with increasing government expenditure and more services, it’s getting worse.
Ramkarran has since called for the establishment of a special, permanent, high-level office, dedicated to a long-term effort to reducing corruption. He said the first task of such an office would be to engage with international institutions, such as the World Bank, the United Nations and many others that have expertise and are willing to devise and implement measures.
Unless the Government acts now, he is of the view that corruption will become entrenched, if it is not already so, and will eventually consume its own ranks.