Naughty or nice?

MOVEMENT for Social Justice (MSJ) leader David Abdulah does not want the Prime Minister to be Scrooge. Instead, it seems he wants Dr Rowley to be Santa Claus.

“I am saying to Dr Rowley just a few days away from Christmas Day, don’t be a Scrooge,” Abdulah said on Sunday.

He asked the Prime Minister to give the trade union movement a rather large Christmas gift: ownership and control of the refinery and the port operations at Pointe-a-Pierre.

The labour movement reckons, with good reason, that such a gift will be a gift that keeps on giving.

But Abdulah’s yuletide entreaty underlines dramatically one of the profound failings now wrought by the reformed procurement law.

The amendments to the law rushed through Parliament this month removed government-to-government arrangements from the ambit of regulatory oversight. They also introduced a host of other exemptions, ranging from “debt financing services for the national budget” to “emergency” medical matters.

One little-appreciated provision of the legislation, though, removed something else. It stripped the procurement regulator of responsibility for the disposal of government property.

The implications of this are profound. The very name of the procurement law, the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act, spells it out for us.

It is true the regulator will still be able to issue guidelines in relation to disposals. But the watchdog will no longer have the power associated with being a middleman or agent of a government in this regard.

During the rushed debate on these legislative changes, Cabinet officials suggested this was a change recommended by none other than the Office of Procurement Regulation (OPR).

In correspondence, the regulator reportedly suggested having responsibility for the disposal of property would simply add too much to the office’s workload – an assertion that must be taken on faith, since, infamously, no government has fully proclaimed the procurement law.

Be that as it may, the Petrotrin experience is the best example yet of why disposal of public property should have remained under careful watch.

It is not only the case that any government can give property to its friends, but it can also wield public assets as a kind of patronage. The pre-election rhetoric by Cabinet on Petrotrin, which dramatically changed once the Government was returned to power, raises concern over the way governments can influence an electorate by using the national patrimony to sway voting blocs.

The amendments are due to be assented to by the President, whose hands are tied in this regard. However, after assent it will fall to the Cabinet to proclaim them.

Perhaps the real gift, to the country as a whole, would be for the to Government to stay its hand and not enforce these misguided provisions.