Category: Book Review

Lal Balkaran’s History of Accounting & Auditing in Guyana: Including the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana, Other Agencies, and Some Coverage of the Caribbean, 1800–2024 is a pioneering work. For more than two centuries, accounting and auditing shaped the way Guyana’s businesses, plantations, and public institutions operated, yet until now no one had attempted to tell their story in a comprehensive way. This book fills that gap.

At over 330 pages, it traces the profession from the Dutch and British colonial systems of bookkeeping, through independence and the turbulence of the 1970s and 1980s, into the present oil-driven era. Balkaran recounts the dominance of expatriate accountants, the rise of firms such as Bookers, and the eventual emergence of Guyanese practitioners. He recalls the contribution of pioneers like A.M.S. Barcellos, the first Guyanese to qualify as an ACCA, and E.A. Adams, the first East Indian in Guyana to do so, alongside notables including Yesu Persaud, Willie Stoll and Jack Alli.

The book is strong in its treatment of institutions but also generous to individuals. Alongside detailed accounts of ministries, revenue authorities, and audit offices, Balkaran acknowledges the contributions of those who shaped the field. By recording their achievements, he preserves the personal dimension of the profession and ensures that such achievements are recorded for posterity.

Women too receive overdue attention. The book highlights the first women to qualify as chartered secretaries and accountants, and those who later broke through to senior professional roles and partnerships. By placing these achievements in a global context, he shows that Guyanese women were part of a wider struggle for recognition in male-dominated professions.

The book is also a valuable record of institutions: the Audit Office, the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Guyana, the Guyana Revenue Authority, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana. Each is carefully chronicled with lists of officeholders, statutes, and milestones. More than fifty pages of appendices supply rare details, including reproductions of audit certificates and economic timelines. For researchers or students, these are priceless.

The strengths of the book are clear. It is comprehensive, patriotic in spirit, and diligent in the quality of painstaking research. What makes Balkaran’s achievement even more commendable is that he is a non-resident: yet his commitment to preserving Guyana’s professional heritage has not diminished. His prose is straightforward and accessible, making the book useful not only to accountants but also to historians and the wider readership.

The book is primarily descriptive rather than analytical, cataloguing institutions and events without probing their deeper significance. Critical questions remain unexplored: How did accounting maintain colonial inequality? The contribution of the Bookers Cadet Scheme to the surge in the profession in the middle years of the last century. How did the exodus of outstanding accountants like “Sammy” Singh, Sugrim Mohan, Ossie Baptiste, Alan Luck and Hamil Majeed impact the profession locally? The extent, if any, to which audit quality was compromised under state ownership? Should the profession engage in emerging issues like oil and gas accounting, sovereign wealth funds and public sector accounting?

These are questions and issues the book leaves for others to explore. The promised Caribbean coverage is also uneven, with Jamaica and Trinidad receiving more attention than smaller territories.

Still, these limitations should not overshadow the significance of this rare achievement. By laying such a foundation, Balkaran has provided the raw material for future scholarship and public debate. His book secures the profession’s past for posterity while opening the space for critical engagement with its present and future. Indeed, this initiative is worthy of emulation in medicine, law and other professions.

In the end, History of Accounting & Auditing in Guyana is more than a professional chronicle. It is part of the national story, reminding us that behind every balance sheet lies a history of people, institutions, and ideas. For that reason, it deserves a place not only on the shelves of accountants, but in the libraries of all who care about Guyana’s past and future.

A book review by Christopher Ram – Part 4

This is the fourth and final part of Maurice Odle’s autobiography narrated in a reflective writing style, in which personal experiences, political analysis, and broader reflections on global issues are interwoven to give a comprehensive view of his life’s work and the contexts in which it unfolded. At the national level, Odle discusses the persistent racial and ethnic divisions in Guyana’s politics and society; the factors that led to the coalition government’s loss in the 2020 election; and the challenges of governance in a deeply divided society. His proposed remedy is for more inclusive governance, which also addresses the economic disparities between different ethnic groups.

Regarding regional issues, Odle reflects on the Caribbean integration process, discussing both its achievements and shortcomings. With his several years within the CARICOM Secretariat, Odle is critical of the Caricom integration experience, citing as examples, the issues of production integration and the establishment of an oil refinery by Guyana rather than utilising the virtually idle refinery plant in Trinidad and Tobago. He is also extremely critical of CARICOM’s tepid approach to helping Haiti, a failing member state, comparing this neglect to the Region’s approach to Guyana during its economic decline during the 70s and 80s.

Noting the rise in violent crimes in the Region, Odle, ever the economist, draws attention to its detrimental effect on the viability of a vibrant social tourism industry and partly related to the drug trade and the easy access to guns from the USA. In that regard Odle suggested that the Caribbean needs to demand a USA contribution to a security fund.

On the international front, Odle provides a critical analysis of global economic governance and security developments. He traces the evolution of international relations from the Cold War era to the present, discussing the rise of China, the resurgence of Russia, and the continued militaristic role of the United States. He critiques what he calls the “New Imperialism,” arguing that it operates through both hard and soft power, including military, economic, and informational means.

Odle’s reflections on global economic governance are particularly insightful. He critiques the imbalances in global rules, the skewed implementation of international agreements, and the limitations of promoting development through global conference declarations. His call for a more democratic and accountable system of global economic management resonates strongly in today’s interconnected world.

Odle also has his fulsome say on the very one-sided nature of the 2016 petroleum contract with Exxon, and the PPP/C’s reversal of “review and renegotiate” while in opposition, to sanctity of contract on gaining power. Odle attributes this to the PPP/C’s visceral fear of alienating America’s interest which he attributes to the US’s role in the PPP’s removal from government in 1953 and 1964. He suggests that the Americans were happy to see it lose office in 2015,  partly owing to corruption and criminalisation of the state. Odle sums up the PPP by saying that remaining in office is more important to the Party than the effective maximisation of benefits according to the people of Guyana.

At a personal level, Odle’s reflects on his personal life, expressing his regrets about not spending enough time with family, and his hopes for the future of Guyana and the Caribbean region. Odle has not been shy to discuss his private life and to the contrast between his three wives (bracket not all at the same time), the even-tempered Margaret Hutson, Brenda Do Harris, the political activist and his current wife Valerie who he describes as the consummate social animal.

An Eventful Life is not just a personal history; it constitutes a crucial historical document that provides invaluable insights into the economic and political dynamics of the Caribbean region and its place in the global economy. For policymakers, academics, and anyone interested in international development or Caribbean affairs, this book offers both historical context and forward-looking analysis from one of the region’s most experienced economic minds.

I will give the final say to two individuals who have known Odle for decades. The first, a literary giant, expressed the hope that what he describes as a compelling narrative should have wide appeal which deserves a very wide readership. The other, a fellow academic described the book as  an “insightful and entertaining memoir.” The latter applauds Odle’s courage and honesty in talking about your family life and other close relationships, and describes Odle’s “reflections, especially at the international level’ as compulsory reading for politicians, scholars and commentators. 

In closing, let me say a word for the London publishers Hansib of Guianese heritage. The quality of the production is excellent and even the list price compares favourably with low-cost publishing countries like China and India. An Eventful Life will be launched at Moray House next Wednesday (Sept. 11) at 5 PM where you will be able to obtain an autographed copy.

A book review by Christopher Ram – April 28, 2024

Introduction

There are five parts to Nagamootoo’s Dear Land of Guyana but none of these identifies the theme or what the reader can expect of the chapters within those uneven parts. In the Preface the author writes rather casually about the clinching of the first petroleum agreement in 1999 and its “modification” in 2016, showing that he too did not then, or even now, understand the statutory framework governing the petroleum sector – made more regrettable coming from an attorney-at-law with years of practice. He wrote that in 1969, the PPP enlisted as a Marxist-Leninist party and that following the 1968 rigged elections, he supported its preparation “for all forms of resistance, including armed struggles”. He writes that after the death of Cheddi Jagan in 1997, the PPP began to lose its authentic democratic credentials and became tainted with corruption.

The Preface describes the swings of national political fortunes starting in the 2011 elections held shortly after Nagamootoo and his wife Sita exited the PPP/C and joined the Alliance for Change. Those elections saw the parliamentary defeat of the PPP after 20 years of unbroken rule, for which Moses took a good measure of credit. More was to come when four years later, by what he described as a strategic alliance of opposition forces, the PPP/C lost governmental power. That cycle continued in 2020 when according to Moses, the PPP was “installed into office”, although he did not say by whom.

Chapter 1 describes his unceremonious exit from the Prime Ministerial official residence that speaks to an unfortunate political culture that the winner must not only triumph, but the loser must be shamed into defeat. Chapter 2 gave an account of the recount by the CARICOM Team, the process of which was described “as transparent as could be expected though the same could not be said about the credibility of the ballots”, with over 7,000 claims being lodged about irregularities and anomalies.

Lingering doubts and the 2020 elections

Like Donald Trump in the USA, Moses still seems to harbour doubts that the Government – of which he was the Prime Minister – had lost the 2020 elections. Writing more than three years after the vote, stories that Guyanese “traveled from overseas on broomsticks, voted and mysteriously disappeared” seem too far-fetched to be taken seriously. Further theories advanced by the writer in the following chapter was that Washington had concluded that the Granger government had “become expendable” owing to its unwillingness to play along with the Americans as they sought the removal of Venezuelan President in an “October Surprise”. The theory, coming from Guyana’s Prime Minister and First Vice President, however unsupported by any evidence, will no doubt generate some interest in Caracas.

One claim by the writer which appears to have been supported by empirical evidence, was the role of international elections mischief-maker Cambridge Analytica, which like the National Enquirer of the USA, will do anything for money – and in the 2020 elections they appeared to have done just that, having been paid tens of millions of dollars by the PPP/C. It is unclear why the writer did not link this to the absolute disregard for campaign financing rules which had been so stridently advocated by Sheila Holder, a founder member of the Alliance for Change.

In chapter 4 Nagamootoo writes that following the 2011 elections, Grainger and other opposition leaders had met with president-elect Ramotar and proposed the formation of a government of national unity. According to the writer, Ramotar responded that the PPP had not included the formation of such a unity government in its manifesto, although that was probably not the real reason. What the writer fails to tell the reader is why Granger did not make a similar offer when he was in the driver’s seat. One possible reason is that all the cabinet positions had been allocated in the Cummingsburg Accord, the pre-election alliance arrangement.

The chapter also includes general stories about the internal politics within the PPP, such as Janet Jagan’s arbitrary and autocratic leadership style and the takeover of the Party by the Moscow-trained gang headed by Jagdeo following her death. Specifically, the writer sought to address the imbroglio concerning Cheddi Jagan’s reference to Moses as a capable person to succeed him as President, to which Janet Jagan took particular objection. The writer suggests that it was Jagdeo who caused the departure from the PPP of other stalwarts like Ralph Ramkarran and Khemraj Ramjattan and writes boldly of the huge scandal of Pradoville One and Pradoville Two. He describes the conversion of the government “into a sort of real estate agency, hiving off prime lands at basement prices, and building outlandish mansions.” It was quite surprising that he only indirectly identified the lead role played by Jagdeo in this wealth grab enterprise.

He noted that corruption became a way of life, spying and wiretapping being made legal, lies and slander against critics and members of the opposition, and concerns about whether the country “was only formally a democracy or was descending swiftly into an autocratic, authoritarian state.”

The Magnificent 7

Chapter five is more positive, hailing the seven AFC members elected to parliament out of the 2011 elections as the Magnificent 7. Writing with more than a touch of nostalgia, Moses referred to the big behind-the-scenes players like Dr. Asquith Rose, current GuySuCo CEO Sasenarine Singh, Bish and Malcolm Panday and Frank De Abreu and Robert Badal. Also recognised are several of his close friends from his PPP days and the dozens of AFC members, both local and overseas. Moses appears to take special delight in Raphael Trotman’s description of him as “the greatest strategist and nationalist”, and Freddie Kissoon’s naming him as the Guyanese personality for 2011 who had “taken his place in the history books” while featuring him in some most hagiographical terms.

Chapter 5 reported on the role played by the AFC in the post-2011 during which the AFC played a “constructive role” and appealed to the PPP/C minority government to pull back from the precipice of a stalemate caused by the continuing political apartness between the government and opposition. The chapter closed with the recommendations by the AFC for urgent and serious negotiations and for the parliamentary parties to embark on purposeful dialogue to find consensus on critical issues. Among those issues were the composition of all constitutional bodies, including the Integrity Commission and the Public Procurement Commission; confirmation of suitably qualified persons to fill the senior positions in the judiciary, the Police and the Office of the Ombudsman; respect for collective bargaining and across-the-board increases for teachers, nurses etc.; reduction of VAT by 2% and increases in the Old Age Pension.

Chapter 6 also dealt with the AFC’s role in the 10th. Parliament and gave a good account of the circumstances surrounding to the Budget which reached the High Court, financial management and accountability, the threat by the PPP/C to derocognise its trade union arm (GAWU), the Skeldon “white elephant”, and the wider issue of governance.

Clearly, the book was setting the conditions for the 2015 elections.

To be continued

A review by Christopher Ram – April 21, 2024

Introduction

Coming out from seclusion roughly 3 1/2 years after the end of his prime ministerialship of the APNU + AFC Coalition Government 2015 – 2020, long-serving politician and attorney-at-law Moses Nagamootoo has published his autobiographical account of that period. He is the second leading member of the Alliance for Change in that Government to offer Guyanese their account of their respective roles during that period.

The first was by Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman whose book From Destiny to Prosperity was serialised in parts 110 – 113 of my oil and gas column in the Stabroek News in October/November last year. My initial intention was to apply a different approach to Nagamootoo’s book offering only a book review rather than a serialisation but having created the precedent with Trotman‘s book, beginning today and continuing over the next couple weeks, I will offer a summary of Moses’ book but leaving it to the reader to fill in the details. The book is available for purchase from Austin‘s Bookstore in Georgetown at the price of $4,000 per copy.

Journalistic and literary pedigree

Unlike Trotman’s book, Dear Land of Guyana is a full-length book of 344 pages of twenty-five chapters and the transcripts of three full-length interviews the writer had given to Mr. Yesu Persaud in a television issue program Eye on The Issue and journalist Gordon Mosley and Dennis Chabrol. Coming from a seasoned writer with literary achievements including two novels – Hendree’s Cure and Fragments from Memory – a collection of poems, Paintings in Poetry, and short stories Like Scattered Seeds, the flow of the writing and the quality of the production is of a high quality. His other literary credentials are not unimpressive, having covered major events in Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean as a former Vice President of the International Organisation of Journalists and founder of the Union of Guyanese Journalists.

He was a popular columnist in the PPP sponsored newspaper the Mirror and also credits himself as speech writer, and researcher for former president Dr Cheddi Jagan, assisting the former PPP leader and President in many of his articles and speeches. The book is well organised, contains quotes from many books and sources, providing specific details of events and personalities which suggest that the writer Nagamootoo had always intended to offer Guyanese an insight into the writer’s experiences as a participant in the government of the country. In doing so however, engaged in a mix of facts, impression, speculation and conclusions some of which may seem extreme and far-fetched.

Speculation and conspiracy

In will mention two examples. Connecting the 2018 No Confidence Motion to prior incidents, the writer referred to an invitation by the BJP including references to the BJP Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Guyanese parliamentarians of Indian Origin for a one-day conference in India, outside of the normal diplomatic channels. According to him, the PPP sent 17 MPs to the conference, including former president and opposition leader Bharrat Jagdeo, former minister Irfan Ali and former Attorney General Anil Nandlall, while only three Indo-Guyanese from the governing parties were invited, including Charrandass Persaud. Continuing, the book states that “Being far away from Guyana, at the same conference, and at the same place, it must have been too tempting (for Jagdeo and Charrandass Persaud) not to talk.”

While he did not name the other two MPs from their side, Moses linked that occasion with his own prior experience with the Indian Government some ten years earlier during a visit to India to accept an award from an NGO. According to him, he was approached with an offer of support by two seemingly well connected, ultra nationalist elements, one of whom had since ascended to a top government post under the BJP. The condition? That Nagamootoo commit himself to certain Indian geo-political and strategic interests in the Caribbean Indo-populated triad – Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname. According to the writer, they scooted when he offered them a drink of a 15 -year Guyana rum from under his desk.

The second was a US Government connection. The right to reported that on a return from a trip abroad, his head of security informed him that the powerful foreign businessman wanted to meet him urgently. He let that slide but then on 7 February 2020, on a trip to the Rupununi, he met a tall and lean (unnamed) man in blue shirt and khaki pants and the person’s wife who was introduced as the niece of Mike Pompeo. Apparently, the man wanted a large tract of land to use for “skills training programs” and that the project would focus on disaster emergencies for which he would access various types of aircraft, Even promising Black Hawk helicopters.

In developing this episode, or rather speculating further, the writer linked the approach with a Reuters report that the US Department of State had posted a $15 million reward for the arrest or capture of Venezuelan President Maduro. Nagamootoo speculated that “mercenaries” could have contemplated an armed incursion into that neighbouring state, using Guyana as a launching pad.

When Nagamootoo reported his Rupununi encounter to President Granger, he was told not to “touch that man …. The guy wants to meet you about a training project.”

Preliminary response

The book ought to demand some response, denial or corroboration to the several incidents although with the absence of a reading culture in Guyana, there may be few direct responses. A former colleague of Nagamootoo from his PPP days was quite dismissive of the book despite not having read it while at the same time expressing an unwillingness to criticise the book because of the “sterling work which author had rendered to the PPP during the struggle for free and fair elections.”

A more recent colleague, having read Chapter 3 Foreign Interference, again, offered this view of what can be considered the most provocative chapter of the book.

“He’s described a few factual events and framed them in the context of American interests in the region and then connected those events via conjecture to America’s interference in our 2020 elections, leaving readers to make some mental leap to rigging. I sense a blurring of the line between interference and rigging. Also, did the interference occur prior to, or after the elections, or both? The reference to Ambassador Lynch doing what she had to do is meaningless without elaboration.

“I don’t think he makes a strong enough case that there was anything unusually sinister about our 2020 elections other than the attempted rigging by GECOM which was rightfully condemned by many, including the Americans. There’s a lot that can be stripped away such as the earlier Trinidadian experience with Cambridge Analytics and the 2015 Ramoutar campaign. These really have no bearing on anything that may have taken place in 2020.

“The clear attempt by persons in GECOM to rig the 2020 elections remains unaddressed – at least in that chapter.”

The writer can also be very direct. He also accuses former president Donald Ramotar and PPP senior member Harry Nokta, of heckling him at the funeral of Isahack Basir, a PPP/C stalwart , singling out Ramotar for making the damning accusation that “Moses kill Basir”. He also describes Peter Ramsaroop, a Guyanese American who had formed a political party in Guyana in opposition to the PPP/C as a “political hustler” and who was a key figure in the confidence operation to topple the Coalition government.

To be continued