Non-declaration of assets lawlessness – Mark Phillips

Integrity Commission

People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Prime Ministerial Candidate, Brigadier (retired) Mark Phillips has said that it is lawlessness that many ministers and senior officials within the incumbent APNU/AFC Administration have failed to declare their assets to the Integrity Commission.

“Many of them are talking to lawyers now before they talk to the Integrity Commission. It’s the Integrity Commission they have to go and talk to declare their assets, they talking to lawyers… All of them should march to the Integrity Commission and declare their assets now because the fact that they are not doing that is lawlessness. That is not integrity, that is not honesty, that is not decency [but] lawlessness,” Phillips stated during a public meeting in Alexander Village on Wednesday evening.
The PPP/C Prime Ministerial candidate noted Guyana can only go forward when it has leaders of integrity and leaders who are honest.
Earlier this month, the Integrity Commission published a list of a number of public officials who failed to declare their assets last year and among those are a number of ministers and former Government parliamentarians.
According to the Gazetted list, as of January 2020, a total of eight ministers failed to declare their assets between July 2018 and June 2019. These included Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Basil Williams, Communities Minister Ronald Bulkan, and Culture Minister George Norton.
Other Ministers include Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Karen Cummings, and Public Service Minister Tabitha Sarabo-Halley, as well as Junior Minister of Agriculture Valarie Adams-Yearwood and Minister Simona Broomes.
Additionally, a number of former Members of Parliament (MPs) from the Government’s side were also included on the list. Permanent Secretaries and technical officials from a number of State agencies and ministries were also among the delinquents, while staff of the National Assembly, including both Speaker of the House Dr Barton Scotland and Clerk Sherlock Isaacs, were flagged.
Chairman of the Integrity Commission, Kumar Doraisami, had told Guyana Times that the Commission has to meet and decide on a way forward.
“We’re having a meeting to decide on that…because the next step is supposed to be prosecution,” Doraisami had stated.
The Integrity Commission Act states that those in default “shall be liable, on summary conviction to a fine of $25,000 and to imprisonment for a term not less than six months nor more than one year”. But according to Duraisami, prosecution should be the last resort, as the Commission’s duty is “to get them to comply”.
“If they don’t, we will have to enforce the law,” Doraisami had stated.
Only on Sunday, PPP/C General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo and Presidential Candidate Irfaan Ali, through their lawyer, threatened to sue the state newspaper, Guyana Chronicle, for publishing an article titled “Do the right thing and resign…. Jagdeo, Ali, among public officials who failed to file 2018 asset declarations”.
Attorney Anil Nandlall said that the publication was designed to defame and damage his clients’ reputation and tarnish their character.
“The said publications are blatant and gross untruths intended to tarnish the character and reputation of my clients and to cause their status to be lowered in the estimation of right-thinking members of society,” Nandlall said.
According to the attorney, the malicious political publicity “gimmick is clearly intended to detract attention from a long list of Government’s Ministers and officials, including the Attorney General, for committing the criminal act of failing to file the relevant declarations with the Integrity Commission, in accordance with the Integrity Commissions Act”.