Kaieteur News, 23 September 2007
Dear Editor,
“Three years later, I (Paul Collier) found myself on a World Bank
mission in the office of a government minister in Guyana , one of the
poorest countries in South America . The minister's telephone
interrupted our conversation. On the other end, he explained after
hanging up, was an anonymous voice hinting that his children might not
arrive home safely that night.
“Earlier that day, the minister had announced plans for court
proceedings against a powerful Asian company active in the same area as
our World Bank project. “That's why I carry this,” he said, hoisting a
leg onto the desktop to reveal a revolver strapped to his lower calf.
“As an outsider, it seemed to me that the minister was a hero engaging
villains in a high-stakes showdown to which I was largely irrelevant.
No matter how carefully we on the World Bank team did our work, what
could it achieve if we did not somehow help this man? How, exactly,
could we help him from Washington ? And anyway, how certain could we be
that he was in fact a hero?”
The abovementioned (in quotation) article was written in Foreign
Affairs, September/October 2007 issue titled: “Smart Samaritans” –
Authored by Michael A. Clemens.
The author is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Global Development
and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University .
These statements were from a review of a book: “The Bottom Billion: Why
the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It.”
Authored by Paul Collier, Oxford University Press, 2007, 205 pp $28.00.
(Summary: ‘Paul Collier offers strong recommendations for helping “the
bottom billion” — those living in poor countries caught in growth
traps.
But he cannot overcome a basic problem: how to create growth where no
functioning economy exists.').
For the full commentary on this work, readers can readily access the
website:
(http://www.foreignaffairs.org
clemens/smart-samaritans.html)
The abovementioned makes really disturbing reading. Here, we have an
Honourable Member of Parliament and Minister of Agriculture of the
Government being threatened by an Asian forestry company.
In this case, the family of the official is being threatened. The
personal threats on the minister are serious enough that the minister
is armed.
This sounds like the Wild West! I find it hard to believe that any
Government official would be joking about such serious matters to a
foreign official.
It is difficult to see a senior minister maligning the state of affairs
of business in the country to a World Bank Official.
Most likely, the minister would also not display a gun if the threats
were not real.
Normally, the police would be providing security for our civilian
officials, yet here the minister must feel unduly threatened to be
armed.
Unfortunately, the Hon. Minister and the Asian forest company are not
named in this article, neither was the time frame mentioned. However,
we have only had a few Ministers of Agriculture and only a few Asian
companies operating in Guyana .
Hence we can work backwards and deduce the possible Minister and
company involved.
In order to ascertain the truth and details of this particular matter —
and there should also be a serious investigation into the operations of
the forestry industry (concessions, etc) —if a senior Minister is being
threatened, then it is also likely that Forestry officials and Forestry
enforcement officials would also be threatened.
It is therefore even more unlikely that an ordinary worker and/ or
villager will complain of any impropriety by any foreign company.
If this has occurred and is occurring in the Forestry industry, then
can we not expect the same situation to be also occurring in the Mining
industry?
Natural resources industries have a tendency to attract unsavory
characters who will try to bribe and corrupt local officials; when
these actions fail, they will try intimidation. We must not allow
ourselves to be bullied in our country.
These issues should therefore be clarified as early as possible because
of the serious implications of this revelation in this respected
publication by a credible World Bank official.
Seelochan Beharry
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