Anti-corruption workshop: Govt working to change bribery culture, needs all hands on deck – Teixeira

…says slow-moving Judiciary can have negative effect on anti-corruption fight

An Anti-Corruption Workshop was held on Wednesday, where the need for all government agencies and the private sector to work together to bring corrupt individuals to justice was highlighted. Additionally, the private sector pledged its support in this anti-corruption fight and called for harsh penalties against culpable persons.

The Parliamentary Affairs and Governance Ministry on Tuesday held an anti-corruption workshop. According to Parliamentary Affairs and Governance Minister Gail Teixeira, the government is working hard to build a new culture – one that will eradicate bribes.
She further noted that the workshop, which saw representatives from both the private sector and government agencies in attendance at the Pegasus Suites and Corporate Centre Exhibition Centre, is a step in that direction.
“What has to be developed consciously is a new culture that is not based on a view by some that you have to grease someone’s hand to get something, built where the systems work transparently and fairly and people trust them to do so. We need to have a new culture where people feel that if they want a passport or put in a tender for a contract, they don’t have to grease anybody’s palm.”
“And that’s what you want. And that’s where we’re going and striving to go. To build a new culture. And this requires, at all levels of the public service and private sector, a zero tolerance for persons offering or asking for bribes. Or asking or soliciting based on violations of the procurement Act,” Teixeira said.

Accelerate
In an interview with the media afterwards, Teixeira meanwhile expressed the need for the judiciary to accelerate its work to effectively support the government’s efforts to bring the corrupt to justice, something that senior officials in the government, such as Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, have been calling for. According to Teixeira, a slow-moving judiciary can have a negative effect on the anti-corruption fight.
“I think obviously there’s weaknesses in what we have and I think we have to work hard on that. But I think that in terms of investigations and moving with alacrity in investigations, those areas we have to work more on. And also, the judiciary. Things take too long… if it takes five years to deal with a case in the court, nobody is going to take it seriously. (They’ll say) we can be corrupt and get away with it. And you get bail. You’re fine,” Texieira said.
“So, we have to have the combination in the anti-corruption areas, that we have to look at. A thorough investigation, investigations that are based on evidence and facts, that can hold up in a court of law. If we don’t have that continuum between the investigation and the court, then you’re going to lose cases and cases may never get there. Or cases are thrown out. Because of lack of evidence.”

Private Sector
Meanwhile, in his presentation to the Anti-Corruption workshop, Chairman of the Private Sector Commission’s Economics and Finance Committee, Ramesh Dookhoo, expressed the organization’s support for the government’s anti-corruption efforts.
According to Dookhoo, there is a lot the private sector is not happy about when it comes to the uneven enforcement of the law against companies. However, he acknowledged that for a bribe to occur, it requires at least two willing parties. This means both the government and private sector must work together to eliminate this.

“It takes a private sector operative to corrupt a government official. And it takes a government official to want to be corrupted. And that’s the difficult part. How do we manage and deal with that? In the private sector our favorite piece of legislation exists in England,” Dookhoo said.
“England has a massive anti-corruption legislation that nobody can get away from, whether you’re a government, regulator, a private sector operative, its very difficult to get away with it. But over many years, that request to lobby for anti-corruption legislation in Guyana, has not been successful.”
That being said, Dookhoo reiterated the private sector’s support for the government. He highlighted the reality that it will take massive collaboration between public entities and the private sector, to bring down corrupt individuals. Dookhoo also called for the existing pieces of anti-corruption legislation to be combined and strengthened, with harsher penalties.
“If you look at our legal framework for corruption, it will take massive collaboration between several agencies to bring a corrupt person or entity to justice. It’s too much, it’s almost impossible to do. There’s the company’s registrar, the companies law. It’s very vague,” Dookhoo, a former PSC Chairman, explained.
“You need to take all these pieces of legislation and have an anti-corruption legislation in Guyana, which makes it easy for the police, for the regulators and everybody else to take you to court and be successful. The penalties also have to be harsh, so that you wouldn’t even want to risk it.” (G3)