Pres Ali’s Procurement Rap, New Song Sung

592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY◊INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM◊GUYANA

Pres Ali’s Procurement Rap, New Song Sung

OPINION BY: GHK LALL– August 2026

Those visits by Pres Ali into places of worship may be paying off. He sees the light. He may insist that he sees god (meaning himself); I settle for light. Light is late in coming. Its speed slowed down by GPL wires and thick political darkness. But light has arrived in Guyana and it struck Pres Ali first.

Opposition and civil society could participate in the national procurement process, part of the oversight mechanism. Now lightning has struck me. Really? After a half decade of PPP cronies and family members ripping off billions from the treasury and reaming Guyanese taxpayers, it may be time for the Opposition and civil society to be involved. Not in the teefin, but in the new PPP stop the stealing campaign.

Pres Ali wouldn’t be Pres Ali if he didn’t see an opportunity to showcase his cute side. Adorable he is not. The national procurement setup has multi-stakeholder presences with little involvement by the government. If the president is going to crack a joke, it should be one that makes Guyanese laff.

His multi-stakeholder plot fell flat. Hence, I beg to differ with him.

Take a look fellow Guyanese, almost all of those so-called multi-stakeholder presences in the national procurement system are either beholden to the PPP Govt, or proxies for it. When they are in procurement programs, the government has many seats at the table. There is no need for a minister, or PPP flunkies. Such would give away the storyline. The evaluators are largely PPP loyalists or PPP indentured and indebted.

Which one was going to go against the tide of corruption?

Recall how quickly the PPP got rid of Geoffrey Vaughn. There were other components to his departure. Recall Dr. Terrence Campbell and his exposé on how Oil Fund oversight really works. One word is adequate enough: rubberstamp. Recall how obstinate the same PPP Govt has been whenever the idea, the push, for opposition and/or civil society presences within the procurement system came up. If the procurement system was pure, if it was untouched by politics, then non-PPP presences would have been seated already.

There was nothing to hide. No prearrangements to conceal. No bloated pricing models to stuff under a seat. No highly favored contractors calling after hours and outside of channels and claiming the right to be the winner of a tender.

Now I hear the government is pondering. The law could be amended. Recall what I said earlier about the Pres Ali seeing the light. It took him a half decade plus to reach this place. He had a dream. In Georgetown, not Georgia. Or, some pressure from foreign diplomats, with the Yankees leading. Good, ole, Uncle Sam salvaging the situation, seeking to tidy up past messes between now and 2030.

It’s evident that corruption has become so rampant it is now out-of-control. Bidders make their own rules. Evaluators finalize their own numbers. The procurement system follows through with its eye on Freedom House and Office of the President. Waiting for a signal, maybe.

The president mentioned the cabinet. The cabinet doesn’t know its ankle (a euphemism) from its elbow. Its members see a bid and they see dollars. Friends due for a partnership, or shakedown.

Bagmen who should come in for a piece of the action.

I am sorry, but this business of the president and the cabinet finding religion overnight neither impresses nor inspires. A bargain, perhaps, to sidestep or go easy on questionable PPP spending in the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee.

The PPP does nothing for nothing. There’s always a catch. So, when I hear of the president with his latest sensationalism, two things register. There’s a hidden trapdoor in this development of opposition and civil society presences in the procurement system.

Certainly, the rewards are so rich that it may prove irresistible to some of the newcomers.