Withdraw changes to procurement law

OPPOSITION Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar has called on Independent senators to vote down the amendments to the procurement law.

But it should not come to that. The Government should withdraw these proposals.

Notwithstanding hours of parliamentary debate last Friday, no compelling case was made to justify the wide provisions contained in the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property (Amendment) Bill 2020.

It is not a matter of the extent to which these provisions will dilute oversight, but simply that they take us in the wrong direction.

If passed, these amendments will give the State free rein when it comes to awarding contracts relating to legal, financial, accounting and medical services. The bill also proposes that the Government may do as it sees fit in relation to “any other service as the minister may by order determine.”

No convincing explanation has been given for the latter. Not by the Prime Minister. Not by Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi. Not by Finance Minister Colm Imbert.

All seem content to ignore not only the parliamentary Opposition but civil society. The voices opposed include those of the Transparency Institute, the Joint Consultative Council, the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the American Chamber of Commerce, the Coalition of Service Industries, the Local Content Chamber and the Institute of Surveyors.

Even the Office of Procurement Regulation (OPR), which is meant to operationalise the very system now being tinkered with, has issued warnings.

Piloting the amendments, Mr Imbert read from correspondence suggesting it was the OPR that asked for another provision, one removing the “disposal” of state property from OPR responsibilities.

Yet the OPR’s objection to other provisions in the bill begs the question: where did these amendments come from, if not the OPR itself?

It is a matter of deep regret that the Government, having promised to bring them early in its second term, failed on Friday to shed light on when the regulations needed to operationalise the law will be tabled.

Instead, we have now seen three separate changes to this law tabled – in 2016, 2017 and 2020. Such piecemeal change, absent full implementation, has only one effect: confusion.

We also heard little that was persuasive in relation to how the bill changes the definition of “bid-rigging.” The new definition calls for proof of a specific intent to benefit one party as opposed to a general desire to “manipulate” the process. The new formulation is harder to prove.

Having seemingly learned little from outrage over the State granting “silk” in the legal fraternity, Mr Imbert further suggested the Cabinet should be free to hand out lucrative legal briefs only to lawyers sympathetic to the State.

But isn’t giving contracts to friends the very definition of what this law was supposed to stop?