Pres. Ali on audits, transparency, overpayments

Pres. Irfaan Ali is given so much to ostentation that he makes a peacock in full feather on a catwalk look like a wet fowl. He is a man who could take tar and make it gleam luminously. He believes so. Audits completed. Recommendations followed. Overpayments down to a national, unnatural, low. Congratulations to the PPP Govt, HE Ali, and the esteemed auditors that Guyana seem so successful at unearthing. Gems of splendid glints. What do I think? Where do I stand?

First, overpayments (and overruns [two different but not unrelated animals]) are now almost extinct. Excellent! But why were they happening at all when there are project oversight teams? Why when supervisory engineers and management consultants circling around and heavily invested in elevations and towers, as well as the bolts-and-nuts, of those tens of billions in projects? With that battalion of well-compensated experts, the president shouldn’t be expounding on overpayments with a contented grin, but expressing concern about why overpayments still exist when there are so many handpicked, handsomely rewarded stewards over public works projects. Given that I mentioned cost overruns, kissing cousins of overpayments, it is inspiring to read that those have disappeared like dinosaurs, save for some crocs. Where to is the question I have? It could be they now take up residence in the original bids, with the surrounding cast of engineers, evaluators, and express rubber stampers in the tender and procurement setup all winking and nodding. What overpayment, what overruns? Hence, Guyana is now this grand place, according to HE Ali. The circle that slaked its voracious greed on countless skullduggeries with billions of infrastructure projects now all exist the cleanest karmic state. Reform or sophisticated roguery?

Second, it’s my duty to go where other citizens run from and hide. There is the summit where auditors sit. It needs some honest scrutiny. Put differently, audit the auditors. There are no sacred cows in my village. It could be that auditors are that skilled, conscientious, that they have driven the fear of the gallows into ruthless project predators. Opportunists have been forced to live vegetarian lives; no extra meats nor fats. Only barebones stock, with basic gravy to enrich blandness. Or, it could be that auditors in Guyana, the bulk of them, know how to conduct their business, in an, er, helpful manner. Meaning, they see, hear, and know what they want to see, hear, and know. Guyanese may no longer have to travel to Asia to view stone monuments, since those are right here right now. May I be so presumptuous as to point to what Guyanese got from their Exxon audits? Guyanese auditors are so fast on their feet, the auditors held in public service reserves, that they took US$214 million in findings on Exxon’s claimed spending, rooted out by a reputable British firm, and strangled that development to the whimpering idiot of US$3 million. There are auditors and there are auditor bosses. If the PPP Govt could try that remarkable stunt, then I reserve the right to question and critique whatever is said, either by the president or the nearest pawn. Let me closeout this one this way. there are lawyers that tarnish the law; medicine men that humiliate Hippocrates; leaders that have lost their way (regardless of reassuring sounds emerging from them). Considering Guyan’s record with audits and auditors, there is justification in being more skeptical nowadays. When the deck is stacked, then the outcome is generally guaranteed. Big ones get to make big speeches.

Fourth, I hear those three fateful words (transparency and accountability), and absorb what embedded the attributes of seriousness do a quick conversion to the sinister. Transparency is not what any man says; it is what the surrounding environment and circumstances support with oaths. Transparency with Exxon audits and post audit findings, to what did that transparency mutate? Transparency relative to access to information, since when denying or hedging such clean and unencumbered access, pursuant to the law, qualifies as transparency? In whose book, and who wrote that Guyana’s Ripley Believe it or Not? Transparency re the whole tendering process, and from those overseeing that process at the award level and above, where are those? How about presenting Guyanese with authentic transparency about lucrative and mutually beneficial relationships with the local gold smuggling community?

When those tips of the iceberg show their faces, and a man still insists that transparency now reigns, he is either too clever by half, or someone in love with self-deception. One not unwilling to be seen as some narcissist and fantasist, who has lost touch with the touch and taste of reality. In sum, Guyanese at the heights have gotten good at looking at lice and heralding them as lions. Audits, transparency, and overpayments are first in line.