Dear Editor,
The watching of accountability by Anand Goolsarran is testimony to the dangers of having persons who are employed by the government, or have a private practice, to be granted access to the national newspapers and allow the individuals to publish columns on a weekly or regular basis for a fee or otherwise.
The particular column that reaffirmed my negative opinion on this practice is pitifully displayed in Anand’s Accountability Watch Column, dated Monday, July 25, 2016, in Stabroek News on page 21, with caption, “Three welcome developments, the appointment of the Tax Chief…”
Conflict of Interest is the catch phrase in Guyana today, though, like the term terrorist used in the United States, it escapes a universal definition.
When one examines Anands’s comments on the Appointment of the Commissioner-General, it is blatantly obvious that the focus of the Watch was not so much on the individual appointed, but on “a Canadian based Guyanese Chartered Accountant of good repute”, according to Anand; (this does suggest that the Commissioner-General appointed does not meet the Accountability watcher standard of good repute). Whether the good repute applicant was flown in at the expenses of the taxpayer or came using his/her own funds – again, points to some intimacy between the Accountability Watcher and the applicant.
It was noted by Anand that the successful applicant was qualified as a Fellow Member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), Certified Public Accountant (CPA), MBA and a Certified General Accountant (CGA). Anand further revealed that the applicant owns an accounting and tax practice in Canada, worked with several international firms… and is also a Certified Fraud Examiner who is pursuing a law degree from the University of London; not a law degree from one of our non-global Caribbean Universities.
Readers, please note that the article by Goolsarran is supposed to be about the appointment of the now Commissioner-General of the Guyana Revenue Authority in the person of Godfrey Statia, not of an unnamed applicant known to Goolsarran, who was not appointed to the position and whose non-appointment seems to displease Anand.
It is interesting to note that the person who was appointed as CG of GRA, unbeknownst to some readers of Accountability Watch, is qualified as a CPA, MBA, Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA), Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Personal Financial Specialist (PFS), has a law degree from the Hugh Wooding Law School, University of the West Indies and also has an accounting and tax practice in the United States.
Statia was also a Deputy Commissioner for several years at the Inland Revenue Department in the 1980s, which was headed by Edgar Heyligar, as was Khurshid Sattaur the former head of GRA (The GRA resulted from the merger of two departments, the Inland Revenue Department and Customs and Excise Department).
Based on Goolsarran’s close examination of the original vacancy notice, he concluded that external candidates were placed at a disadvantage as the requirement for “15 years’ experience in customs administration, eight of which must be at an executive level”. As there was no provision for equivalent external experience, it seems to me the author/s of the vacancy notice saw no need to state the obvious, more alarming is Anand’s implicit view that non-external candidates were not placed at a disadvantage.
In addition to highlighting the good repute of the successful applicant, Monsieur Goolsarran in his article, described the Commissioner-General’s selection process as “in some ways this could be considered as bid rigging”, what a giant leap by our Accountability Watcher, perception and reality are both ignored, in a most tainted and vicious manner by our “Watcher”.
Our national newspapers should be very careful in appointing columnists and commentators who are employed by the government or carry on private practice that include government and corporate sector clientele – hence, Goolsarran, Ram and Lucas come to mind. Let these denizens of Guyana limit their opinions to “Letters to the Editor”.
To paraphrase Goolsarran, using the last sentence of his article, “failure to relinquish his positions is posing a serious conflict of interest”.
Yours faithfully,
Nigel Hinds
