Dear Editor,
Did President David Granger break the law in regard to the US$18 million ExxonMobil signing bonus being placed into a bank account at the Bank of Guyana, as opposed to the money being placed into The Consolidated Fund?
Laws, rules and regulations are there to uphold our moral and ethical standards.
Some of our Laws stem from The Ten Commandments.
The Jews take The Ten Commandments seriously, including the one that says you should not perform work on the Sabbath Day. Yet, in trying to decipher what actually construe work, they made for themselves a lot of rules and regulations that caused a lot of confusion. They had to do away with some of those rules and regulations and let common sense prevail.
The President did break the law in not placing the US$18 million ExxonMobil signing bonus into The Consolidated Fund. Yet, his approach was the common sense way to do it, even if it was not legal. The legal way to do it would be to place the money into The Consolidated Fund, then withdraw it for national security emergencies.
Nothing elaborates how our rules and regulations are entrapping and confusing us more than the controversy surrounding NICIL. Common sense says that NICIL can keep the money it gets from the sale of assets, unless it pays a dividend, which would then need to be paid into The Consolidated Fund.
Yours faithfully,
Sean Ori
