A combative President Irfaan Ali today passionately defended the Natural Resource Fund Bill which will come up in the National Assembly tomorrow for a second reading and passage despite calls for it to be delayed and for consultations to be held on its contents.
The Government has faced an avalanche of criticism over the new bill and the move to rush it through the National Assembly. It was only presented to the Assembly last week.
The new Bill seeks to replace a previous one that was passed under the coalition government. The President has described the existing legislation as an illegitimate Bill since it was passed after the no-confidence vote in the National Assembly back in 2018.
In justifying the Bill today, the President in a 27-minute long talking session with no media present, indicated no plans to delay the passage of the Bill, saying that his party is keeping a campaign promise to move the legislation through the House.
The new piece of legislation proposes sweeping powers to the President including the power to name a Board of Directors of the Natural Resources Fund consisting of not less than three and not more than five members including a Chairman.
The President said today that the Board of Directors when appointed will be something Guyanese will be proud of but first noted that there are specific qualifications for those board members, even though those qualifications will be determined by the government before he, the President makes the appointment.
“I am saying to every single Guyanese that you will be proud of the board—the board has to be appointed but we cannot be critical of a board that does not even exist as yet and we can’t say anybody would be appointed on the board, the law sets out the minimum qualifications that if require, we can’t say the Opposition is not involved, there will be a parliamentary nominee but more than that everything that is done, every expenditure, the entire Parliamentary Opposition will be able to scrutinize,” the President said.
It was Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo who recently revealed that the Government intends to remove the 22-member oversight committee that was originally set up to monitor the Natural Resource Fund. Jagdeo said such a large committee was cumbersome.
Today, the President assured that Guyanese should not be worried about the new legislation and its changes that will govern the spending for Guyana’s oil income.
“This is not a President and government who will take the money to go and buy five Rolls Royce in the Presidential fleet, we have outlined very clearly the type of expenditure—people-centered, people-oriented,” the President explained in his defense of the Bill this afternoon.
The President also said Guyanese will be at the center of the new legislation adding that mechanisms are also in place in the Bill for Guyanese to calculate the spending of the oil revenues and to gauge deposits and withdrawals.
He said the intention of the Bill is to ensure that Guyanese have a say on the management of the fund.
“The Minister of Finance now has to publish in the Gazette within three months, all revenue, all receipts, that comes into the fund, every single cent that comes into the fund has to be published. But much more than this, he then has to table that in the National Assembly,” the President explained.
The Opposition and Civil Society groups have all criticized the sweeping changes attached to the new legislation, pointing out that it will essentially gut the existing law and remove independent oversight of the fund and the government’s spending.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login