Recently appointed Attorney General (AG), Anil Nandlall, is deeply disappointed with the extremely poor performance of his predecessor, Basil Williams, who he said did nothing to improve the justice system or the legal affairs of the country. In fact, Nandlall said that the performance of the former AG has been “…very poor, very poor, very poor, till at the end, it came down to zero. And that is my frank assessment.”
The Minister of Legal Affairs said not a single legislation was passed other than the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Bill that the APNU+AFC had rejected when it was in opposition.
Nandlall said, “I left important bills ready, the man did not even pass that. He could have passed that and take the credit. All the cases of substance, he lost and that is public knowledge…I don’t know which area he redeemed himself in… I don’t know what he did in five years. I believe these people just used to go to work and go home back.”
Further to this, the Minister said that all the work of the departments is exactly they he left it in 2015. “Of course, they do a lot of aesthetics, they like that. Like the Office of the President is shining, they polish up and do fancy woodwork and so on and we appreciate that. But nothing that would advance the lives of Guyanese and nothing that would advance the developmental agenda has been done,” Nandlall stated.
In fact, the Attorney General said during his interview on a local radio programme that Williams and the APNU+AFC have actually retarded Guyana’s progress. Nandlall said that he will soon hold a press conference to show how is predecessor was spending public funds as though it was going out of style. The Minister said he will also expose how Williams made ad hoc decisions which did not improve the development of the Attorney General’s Chambers.
“He was sending people to study and it didn’t take into account whether we need that skill set or not, whether that is the best use of the taxpayers’ money. Those considerations I’ve never seen evidence of them being taken into account. And I will expose all of these things soon,” Nandlall concluded.
