Criminal charges stymied as Govt refuses to release names – Edghill

Integrity Commission filings

It has been more than one month since Opposition Member of Parliament Bishop Juan Edghill had dispatched to the Ministry of the Presidency (MoTP) a request for the names of those members of Parliament who were delinquent in submitting their declarations to the Integrity Commission, but he is yet to be supplied the information.

Edghill had requested this information after the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) had signalled its intention to bring criminal charges against members of Parliament who were recalcitrant in this respect. His request was made in accordance with the Access to Information Act.
In a recent interview with Guyana Times, Edghill revealed that the MoTP, reluctant to place this information in the public domain, is consequently stymieing the pursuit of holding Members of Parliament accountable.
“I have not even received an acknowledgement of my letter, even though it was personally delivered to the office of the permanent secretary and an identifiable staff member signed an acknowledgement note saying it was received,” Edghill disclosed. “So I have not received a reply to the letter; I have not even received an acknowledgement to the letter.
“The next step is that we will have to pursue the matter based upon what the Act provides for in the event of a public authority not providing the information requested. Then it is a matter for the Commissioner of Information to intervene,” he explained.
Edghill explained that, out of the expectation that the Ministry of the Presidency would have acceded to his request for information, he has not as yet written to the Minister of Information, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, in regard to the information requested.
“Maybe the reason we have been met with this silence is that, in my letter, I stated that this information, once received, would be used for the filing of private criminal charges,” he suggested during the interview.
Edghill made it clear that the party needs the list of names in order to take appropriate action. According to the parliamentarian, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of the Presidency is the competent authority to answer the questions solicited under the law.
“I guess some of the persons whose names may be on the list may or may not be influencing the flow of information, but we have to wait and see. The bottom line is (that) this is information that should have been public, because the Act requires the publication of the names on a website or in a public place,” he explained.

Letter
In the letter he had sent to the MoTP, a copy of which had been released to the media, Edghill had indicated that the information being requested was intended to be used in the pursuit of private criminal charges against identified delinquents, who had failed to file declarations with the Integrity Commission in accordance with section 22 of the Integrity Commission Act of 1997.
The Opposition Parliamentarian had asked for the names of the PNCR Parliamentarians of the 8th and 9th Parliaments who had failed to submit to the Integrity Commission of Guyana the statutorily required Schedule iii declaration forms (2), disclosing the incomes, assets and liabilities of themselves and immediate family members for the years 2001 to 2006 and 2006 to 2011.
Edghill is also requesting information on APNU Parliamentarians in the 10th Parliament who had failed to submit to the Integrity Commission of Guyana the statutorily required Schedule iii declaration forms (2) disclosing the incomes, assets and liabilities of themselves and immediate family members for the years 2011 to 2015.
Responsible for the accountability of persons holding public office, the Integrity Commission has for some time been without a Chairman, and has reportedly been functioning with a skeleton staff. Before Edghill’s letter was dispatched, the Integrity Commission Chairman had appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and admitted that the Integrity Commission had essentially been dismantled by the coalition Government, and then had only one staff member at the Commission’s Secretariat.
This comes even as Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo, on numerous prior occasions, had called out Government for refusing to support an Opposition sponsored-motion to have all parliamentarians make certain submissions to the Integrity Commission.