Posts

Posted on

Surge

Introduction
Two very important pieces of legislation to which the Jagdeo administration had committed itself are now before Special Select Committees of the National Assembly working feverishly overtime to ensure that this legislation is passed before the Ninth Parliament comes to an end. The two are the Access to Information Bill 2011 and the Telecommunications Bill 2010. A third issue being addressed by a Select Committee is one dealing with campaign financing introduced by AFC prime ministerial candidate Sheila Holder, although it is reportedly receiving little support from the PPP/C which with the resources of the state at its disposal seems to have little interest in such esoteric matters.

In today’s column I will consider the Access to Information Bill and begin a review of the Telecommunications Bill which I believe has a number of implications even beyond the development of the telecommunications sector and by extension the rest of Guyana. When these two Bills emerge from their respective select committees they will not have had the full benefit of the parliamentary opposition because it opposed the deferment of the recess by the government, which is determined to ensure that the two bills are passed and assented to by President Jagdeo before he leaves office.

Access to information and campaign financing were two of the areas on which US President Carter might have thought he had had some kind of commitment from President Jagdeo when he left Guyana in 2003. Indeed President Carter, whose Center had spent years and millions of dollars on the now forgotten National Development Strategy, in his parting press statement on August 19, 2004 – a full seven years ago – noted that he had offered his Center’s technical and financial resources to the Government of Guyana in developing access to information and political campaign financing legislation.

Access to Information
Last Friday I appeared before the Special Select Committee on the Access to Information Bill to which I had earlier made a written submission. Based on some research on similar legislation particularly that closer to home I am convinced that our Bill serves no purpose other than to say we have access to information legislation. The whole structure of the Bill is wrong: only one of seven directors is to be appointed on the recommendation of the Leader of the Opposition; the control of information is in the hands of a single political appointee; there is no provision for an oversight mechanism; the only effective complaint mechanism is the High Court; the information czar is allowed a period of thirty days of receipt of a request merely to acknowledge it and sixty days to advise the applicant if the request is approved or denied. On top of these the Bill provides for so many exemptions that I would be surprised if it will ever be used by more than a dozen or so persons annually.

Systemic problems
As I reflected on my past experiences with select committees there are at least five problems that struck me concerning the formulation of legislation in Guyana. The first is the adversarial nature our parliamentary culture which extends to the select committees. This culture places persons and citizens in rival camps and the camp becomes more important than the contribution or the message. This would mean that if a submission comes from Clive Thomas or a Christopher Ram it must be rejected since that is considered as yielding in to the “opposition.”

The second which derives partly from the first is that a Bill is either a government Bill or an opposition Bill. If the Bill comes from the opposition, as sometimes happens, the government members of the select committee feel compelled to oppose it. If it is a government Bill, the government members likewise are compelled to support it – even if it or any part of it offends their principles or their intellect. For example there are several pieces of legislation that have passed through select committees and the National Assembly which seem to be unconstitutional. I cannot accept that an Anil Nandlall or a Raphael Trotman who are on the Access to Information Select Committee would not be aware of such instances, and possibly in respect of the Access to Information Bill they are considering. I would, under normal circumstances, expect them to say to the Chairperson: “We cannot support such or such a clause and if the weight of the majority still goes against our knowledge and principles we will produce a minority report.”

The third is the system we have adopted in preparing for legislation. In the Westminster model, governments intending to introduce important pieces of legislation would issue a Green Paper, which is a statement by the government on a particular topic setting out propositions to the nation for discussion. My information is that that used to be done here but we have thrown away the baby with the bath water and by the time a Bill is presented it is the party’s Bill and the party line must be followed. That hardly results in good policy or legislation.

The fourth problem appeared ironic in the context of the ATI Bill. One of the principles recommended by the International NGO Article 19, is that meetings of governing bodies – which should obviously include the National Assembly and its committees – must be open to the public. When I pointed this principle out on Friday, Ms Gail Teixeira, acting Chairperson of the Select Committee, with a straight face sought to inform me that the National Assembly recently voted to keep such meetings private. Perhaps the irony of her statement and the occasion escaped the country’s governance czar.

The fifth and final one is that we still have legislation that is premised on the fundamental assumption that “we” will always be in power. The PPP/C it seems has not learnt from the PNCR’s lesson that your own rod whips you hardest. The constitution that they passed when they enjoyed the fruits of power is now their biggest obstacle to preventing the excesses of their successor. The time may come when the PPP/C in opposition may need information. Then they will know how flawed, lopsided and undemocratic the present draft of the Access to Information Bill really is.

Telecommunications Bill
This Bill has as much importance to foreign investment, technology and development as the Access to Information Bill has to freedom of speech, democracy and governance. But with the opposition parties no longer taking part in any parliamentary activities the government is once again likely to push this Bill through the National Assembly. Whatever may be the government’s intention in bringing the Bill at this late stage, it must also be counting on receiving much public support; one of the Bill’s effects is the end of the monopoly which GT&T has enjoyed for twenty years under an agreement its parent company entered into with the Hoyte administration.

The Bill is a huge piece of legislation extending to ninety-five clauses. Yet perhaps the most important effect is included or addressed only by implication and that is GT&T’s monopoly over key segments of the telecommunications sector.

This monopoly goes back to 1991 when it was granted to ATN as an inducement to have them buy an 80% stake in the then Guyana Telecommunications Corporation. Monopolies are of course “utterly void” under our Civil Law Act, which is second only to the country’s constitution in terms of legal significance. (That Act saw the country breaking away from Roman-Dutch law and adopting, with a few exceptions, the civil law of England.) Yet, the matter is not so simple and GT&T will naturally seek to protect what they consider their rights.

The Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill states that it “provides for an open, liberalised and competitive telecommunication sector that will be attractive to new market entrants and investors, while preserving the activities of the current sector participants.” I doubt whether GT&T is likely to share that view not only because it impliedly loses its monopoly, but also because it gives favoured treatment to some of the President’s friends..

The Explanatory Memorandum goes on to state that it seeks to “creat[e] a competitive environment for telecommunications [which] is expected to result in greater choice, better quality of service and lower prices for consumers. To further national and regional social and economic development, the Bill also specifically addresses the expansion of telecommunications networks and services into unserved and underserved areas through the institution of a new universal access/universal services programme.”

It also states that along with consequential amendments to the Public Utilities Commission Act 1999 which has also been introduced in the National Assembly and regulations expected to be published once the Bill is assented to, the country will have a clear, harmonized framework and a level playing field for the sector that is lacking in the current laws.” It expects that these would bring us in line with “other countries in the world, including most Caribbean countries”.

The authors are confident that the legal framework inherent in the Bill will provide for transparency and non-discrimination in the issuance and monitoring of licences and authorisations to use the spectrum; seamless interconnection and access between and among telecommunications networks and services; and price regulation where required to ensure competition and protect consumers.

Next week I will examine the extent to which these objectives are reflected in the Bill and consider the implications – legal and otherwise – of the state’s attempt to remove unilaterally the right of the company to have its exclusive licence extended.

Posted on

Assent for Bill came 628 days after passage in National Assembly

On Wednesday we collected from the Office of the President the most recent batch of Official Gazettes. Included among these was a Legal Supplement to the Official Gazette dated October 12, 2010 and containing the Forest Act # 6 of 2009.

The Bill for that Act was passed on January 22, 2009 and assented to by the President on October 12, 2010 – 628 days after the passage in the National Assembly. Under the constitution the President has twenty-one days to assent to bills.

Not only does the President continue to show contempt for the country’s constitution which he has taken an oath to uphold, but it seems that he and his Minister of Legal Affairs and Attorney General are comfortable backdating of the Official Gazette, arguably the country’s most important legal publication.

One must wonder whether such questionable conduct and delay was Vaitarna related or is the result of some persuasion from Norway.

Posted on

Guyana in a housing bubble – not really (but maybe)

Introduction
I ended last week’s column by suggesting that the commercial banks – which account for 58% of the mortgage lending by financial institutions – have both the liquidity and the reserves to withstand any significant reduction in house prices and consequential foreclosures. I believe that the position is different with the non-bank mortgage lenders which would include the insurance companies and more significantly the New Building Society which by definition is heavily invested in the housing sector.

The NBS accounts for 31% of the assets of the non-bank financial institutions and has some 51% of its own assets in mortgage loans, by far the most exposed institution in the sub-sector. Part one of this column two weeks ago noted that the commercial banks have been gaining market share in the mortgage market mainly at the expense of the NBS.

Over the five year period 2006 to 2010 NBS increased its mortgage loans from 6,299 to 8,197, an increase of 30% over the period, or an average of 380 new mortgages per annum. It is at least surprising that the NBS which offers very competitive lending rates could only increase its annual number of mortgage loans by less than 10% of the number of houselots allocated by the government. This probably points to a situation of allottees not being able to build for several years, if at all.

In part two last week, I noted that the PPP/C 2006 elections manifesto had stated a figure of some 70,000 house lots having been allocated across the country since 1992. The annual budget speeches since then have revealed that since 2007 the government has spent over twenty billion dollars on development of these communities. One would therefore have expected the country’s sole housing and loan institution to have done much better during the house lots boom. Whether NBS’s failure to cash in on the boom is a weakness or serendipitous is debatable, but it would still be the most exposed entity in case of a bubble in the housing market.

NBS and speculators
The average balance on the mortgage loans outstanding by the NBS has increased from $2.28 million at December 31, 2006 to $2.64 million at December 31, 2010, though about 50 % of the number of its loans is for less than $2 million. Unless there is a serious loss of income by borrowers there should be no major difficulties in servicing those debts, even if there is a fall in house prices. But that would not be the whole story.

The NBS has seen its lending limits increased significantly over the past few years and if the notes to the 2010 audited financial statements are correct, it has been engaging in some adventurous lending which could have serious consequences involving $313 million.

Except for this, NBS is protected because the overwhelming majority of its homes are owner-occupied. In such circumstances, regardless of the state of the housing market there should be no problem once homeowners can service their debts whether from their own resources or from remittances. NBS’s conservative lending policy will also work in its favour since the policy is structured to ensure that the institution does not lose, even in a forced sale.

That then leaves us with the property developers who build with a view to sell down the road. This is the group normally most at risk since they build now with a view to sell later. In a deteriorating market this is bad for the developer. Experience has shown however that in many instances this is a group and an activity that is characterised by money-laundering and they do not mind waiting a few years to dry-clean their money.

In summary, therefore, there are many reasons why at this stage lenders need not be overly concerned about a housing bubble. The banks are not disproportionately exposed and have sufficient reserves and liquidity to cushion any problems in the housing market. Of the non-bank financial institutions the one with the biggest exposure is the NBS but it too ought to be able to withstand any decline in the market.

And many of the property developers have characteristics of their own that allow them to act in their own special way – outside of the normal rules of economics and even the law.

One million per house lot
This does not mean that a housing glut will be problem-free. It could bring an important sector of the economy to a halt and cause ripple effects on the construction industry, the wood sector and distributive trade, lending and government revenues.

For lenders, if demand for homes dries up lending will also decline and the institutions may be even more reluctant to take in deposits. Even a modest decline can have wide ripple effects.

But there are other issues we need to consider in the housing policy. Whatever its faults, the PNC did have some excellent housing projects and decades after their establishment, Meadow Brook Gardens and South Ruimveldt are pleasant communities with decent amenities.

By contrast the Stabroek News editorial of July 7, 2011 may have only just overstated the position when it said that under the current housing policy a large expanse of bush crisscrossed with mud dams earns the accolade housing scheme.

Yet the government reported that in 2009 it spent some $1.5 billion to develop six new sites to provide 1,504 new houselots – or one million per house lot in low-income settlement schemes. It just makes no sense other than to those spending and those benefiting from such expenditure.

Basic facilities
And what do these areas have to show for such generous spending? Whether a community is low income or top range, it needs places for the children to play and adults to exercise and socialise, schools to teach and learn, post offices for the elderly, temples mosques and churches for worshippers and good roads, electricity, water and sewerage for all.

They need roads in and out, wide enough for traffic not today but twenty years hence. The residents need jobs conveniently located or accessible to where they live. One of the ironies that are being confronted by the ever expanding number of commercial banks is that the person living in Diamond still finds it more convenient to do their banking in Georgetown than at the Diamond branch for the simple reason that s/he works in Georgetown.

In many areas where house lots have been sold basic sanitation facilities would be considered luxuries. The Guyana Population Census 2002 reported over one half of the country’s households still use pit latrines and that the proportion of households using the modern method of water closet linked to sewer line has declined! Surely after sixty years we should have extended the sewer system beyond Georgetown.

Spending spree
The other major problem associated with the housing policy is corruption, wastage and extravagance. Budget speeches show that over twenty billion dollars have been expended on housing schemes since 2007. Not surprisingly, the house lot policy does not seem unrelated to electioneering. For example in 2006, the year of the last general elections, $795 million was spent on developing infrastructure for 9,000 houselots “in areas such as Zeelugt North and Sophia.” The budget speech announced us that “similar work was undertaken on 4,700 houselots under the Low Income Housing Project in areas such as Westminster, Belle West, Plantation Glasgow, Cummings Lodge and Sophia.” No value was given. And then the same paragraph states that “nearly $251 million was spent on providing house lots in areas such as Vigilance South, Amelia’s Ward, Vryheid’s Lust and Block II Enterprise.”

In 2010, one year before the next general election, the nation was told that 6,331 house lots were allocated and some $9P.6 billion dollars was spent (average $1.5 million), against an original budget figure of $2.8 billion. What is interesting is that many of the communities benefiting from the 2006 spending such as Belle West, Westminster and Sophia are again part of the loot. As if that is not enough, some $3.6 billion has been allocated to the housing sector in 2011 and some 7,500 houselots are earmarked for allocation.

If there is a problem on the expenditure side, the income side is no different. I am reliably informed by one of the recent on-the-spot purchasers of a house lot that receipts for the sale of land are issued by the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA), a statutory body.

Appendix T of the National Estimates for 2011 showing an abstract of revenue and expenditure of this body indicates that almost the entire income of the CHPA for 2010 comes from the central government – $150 million as a subsidy and $7.5 billion as a capital grant. If indeed 6,331 house lots were allocated in 2010 then even if the average sale price is $300,000 (some lots are sold for more than $1.2 million) the revenue should be over $1.8 billion. Something is missing.

Conclusion
Over the course of the last three weeks I have had my closest look at what constitutes the country’s housing policy. Prior to 2006 the house lots given out by the government should have far exceeded the unmet needs of the entire population with many to spare.

Further allocations since then would have exacerbated the situation.

It is therefore necessary for a survey to be done to ascertain the number of house lots across the regions that have still not developed into houses.

It would be useful too for a value-for-money audit – or better still a forensic audit – of the housing programme and expenditure to be carried out. Housing is a major public policy/social/basic needs issue with important long-term implications. It requires coordination with and can contribute significantly to several other sectors. It should not be left entirely to an overenthusiastic individual who cannot remember a payment of $4 billion.

While the lending institutions do not face any immediate risks of and from a bubble, an extra bit of caution in their lending programme could be very useful.

For those seeking a home, the advice might soon be to buy rather than build.

As the supply of homes increases relative to demand, cost may very well exceed market price. Buyers welcome that.

Corrections
I apologise for two errors in last week’s column which are regretted but which did not affect the thrust of the article.

The last sentence under ‘Self-Help’ should have read: And as we have said this does not take in the number of private houses built by individuals on privately acquired lands.

The second was in respect of the dimensions of the lots being offered by private developers.

In the first sentence of the second paragraph under the heading ‘Friendly domestic capitalists’ these were stated as 50 yards by 100 yards instead of feet in both cases.

Posted on

Guyana in a housing bubble – not really (but maybe)

Introduction
I was totally surprised at the very informed responses to last week’s introductory part on the country’s housing situation. What made it even more interesting were the sources of the comments and the insights they offered. Indeed they made me do some previously unintended research, the results of which are indeed quite revealing and troubling particularly given the level of accountability and integrity we have experienced in the housing sector.

What has now emerged is that there is more to the superficial impressions and conclusions on the government’s housing policy. They point to an absence of national planning and coordination, developments of some regions and areas at the expense of others, political opportunism and not unexpectedly and increasingly, concerns about accountability, transparency and corruption. Perhaps that is why in a recent talk to young members of the Alliance For Change, Dr Tarron Khemraj a talented economist and academic said that if called upon to grade the PPP/C’s housing policy, the most generous he could give would be a B Minus.

Just maybe
I will return to my concerns later, but for now I go back to the caption of this article and the question whether or not Guyana is in a housing bubble. Last week I was fairly certain that we are not. Further investigation however forces me to qualify that opinion and I have to state at this stage that a bubble is not entirely unlikely in the short term – any time in the next three years.

Recall from last week that a bubble arises whenever the fundamentals of the market do not apply to a sector of the economy. That fundamental states that as more of a commodity becomes available, prices fall. The converse is also true – as supply decreases, prices will rise as we are currently witnessing with the price of chickens. If there is a housing bubble, consumers will continue to pay higher and higher prices for real estate, regardless of whether or not the stock of housing units increases – that is until the Day of Judgment when the bubble bursts.

House lots and housing stock
We must of course be clear to distinguish between house lots and housing stock – something that I am not sure is understood by the government that continues a mad rush to distribute ever more house lots. Indeed it has now decided that with an over-allocation to residents, it must move to allocating lots to non-resident Guyanese and we ought not to rule out house lots for the Chinese and Brazilians too. The evidence points unmistakably to an oversupply.

But we must also distinguish between a bubble and its consequences. The fact that there is an oversupply does not mean there is a crisis, if there are persons who are prepared to pay the obviously inflated prices. The problem arises if the real estate is paid for by borrowings from the financial sector and if the borrowers are unable to meet their mortgage payments. The result of this is that a whole lot of properties come on the market as a result of foreclosures and forced sale of several properties almost simultaneously. This is essentially what happened in the USA and resulted not only in the collapse of the real estate market but a number of financial institutions as well.

Background
Housing policy formulation has not been a recent phenomenon. The first formulation of a country-wide housing plan was undertaken in 1954 by the Interim Government which was put in place following the suspension of the 1953 government. Perhaps because of political considerations – the deficit was in unfriendly areas – the PPP government from 1957 to 1964 did not allocate sufficient funding for the programme and the housing deficit – the technical word for shortage – therefore increased. The policy was revisited in succeeding PNC administrations with a number of new schemes established mainly in – not surprisingly – PNC friendly areas.

Those efforts however did not fully satisfy the need for housing which at 1980 stood at 137,374 units, giving an estimated deficit of 12,360 units, according to a paper prepared by the Hoyte administration in 1986. That paper calculated that by 1986 the deficit had increased to between 25,000 and 30,000, a generous number but which the paper attributed to the increasing number of households arising from cultural factors, the need for specialised accommodation and the decline in housing construction.

Self-help
It means that the PPP in 1992 inherited a housing stock of approximately 150,000 units and a deficit of 31,000 units for a population of 723,673 women, men and children. It responded with great speed – if not decency – and in a move that has become quite characteristic of the PPP, the Jagan administration immediately fixed the housing deficit for its political elite by the establishment of Pradoville 1 where several ministers, party chiefs and top civil servants were given prime real estate at peppercorn prices. Ironically, and for some strange reason the Housing Minister at the time, Dr Henry Jeffrey, was not among the lucky few.

In a Housing Policy paper tabled in the National Assembly around 1994 by Dr Jeffrey, the housing deficit to the year 2000 was projected at 20,078; a figure arrived at by assumptions of the then number of households (rather than housing stock), the size of the population and the replacement factor. Fast forward to 2000 when the population was 750,000 and divide that number by an average family/household size of four.

On that basis the number of housing units needed to house each family in their own homes would be 190,000. By that time the number of housing units had increased to approximately 160,000 leaving a need for 30,000 units. If we make allowance of one-third of that for construction on previously owned lands, lands purchased from both the state and individuals and houses bought from private developers then the house lots needed since 2000 to meet the deficit would have been approximately 20,000.

The PPP/C’s manifesto for the 2001 elections states that the number of house lots projected to be distributed is 50,000 – well over twice the number needed to meet the deficit! Then in its 2006 manifesto the party boasted of having created a housing boom in Guyana with 70,000 house lots distributed since 1992 – or sufficient to house 280,000 persons in households of four.

That means that by 2006, if all the house lots had been used for housing, there would be sufficient houses for close to nine hundred thousand persons – more than the entire population of Guyana. And as we have said this does take in the number of private houses built by individuals on privately acquired lands.

Friendly domestic capitalists
The situation is worse when we consider certain other developments. In the Providence East Bank Demerara area the Jagdeo administration has given/sold some one thousand acres of GuySuCo land to close friends, supporters and contractors including Messrs Lumumba and Shivraj both of whom have been the beneficiaries of the Jagdeo administration’s largesse, BK International, Courtney Benn Construction and VIKAB.

These new capitalists are now offering lots of 50 yards by 100 yards which gives eight lots per acre. In the Providence area alone there will therefore be land for another eight thousand housing units or 32,000 persons! And then there is the other friend Mr Eddie Boyer who acquired from the Privatisation Unit some 103 acres, of which some 400 hundred lots are on offer which will house another two thousand persons!

The housing bazaar
The other factor that actually makes the whole bazaar for house lots more suspicious and that can create problems for the housing market is that except for the Linden area the house lots are on or within miles of the coast. In other words even the very strange situation painted by these facts is decidedly worse if we deduct the population in the hinterland areas to which the concept of house lots is completely alien.

What has emerged recently is that the house lot policy is not devoid of political considerations and reminds me of the word gerrymandering – a favourite word of Cheddi Jagan when he wanted to accuse his opponents of redrawing the demographic map for electoral purposes. The allocation of land at Diamond and Eccles on the East Bank of Demerara will make an enormous difference in the 2011 elections and can for the first time give the PPP control of Region 4.

In the government’s reckoning, economics take second place to politics and it matters not that there are implications for the other regions from which large numbers of allottees are drawn, issues of public services, utilities, access, etc. In any case none of the political elite lives in Diamond and only a few remain in Eccles.

Oversupply and its implications
Based on these numbers, Business Page safely concludes then that there is an oversupply of housing land, if not yet housing. Had there not been selective controls over disposals of house lots, market forces would have brought down the price for land since it is clear that there are lots of house lots which have not been developed into houses. And of course the price for land cannot be entirely divorced from housing market.

What then are the implications for a bubble? That depends on whether or not the housing boom is financed by borrowings from the banking sector. The real estate problem in the US was triggered by the mortgage crisis as homeowners faced with a contraction in the economy and the loss of jobs were unable to finance their sometimes 100 % mortgages, causing the lenders to foreclose or the borrowers to sell and cut their losses. The effect was the same – too many properties going on the market at the same time and prices collapsing. What started as a problem for individual homeowners and single financial houses soon became a deluge that affected the entire economy from which the US has so far not recovered.

Bank lending
As noted last week, available information from official sources indicates that the total amount of mortgage loans at December 31, 2010 was approximately $60 billion, with the non-bank sector accounting for about 42% and the banks accounting for 58%. The 2010 Bank of Guyana Report shows that the share of the commercial banks’ loans and advances to the private sector in real estate was 31%. At first sight this might seem to include both commercial and personal loans but there is reason to believe that lending is categorized by the nature of the underlying business rather than the purpose of the particular loan or advance.

In other words, lending to the distribution sector for real property acquisition is classified not as real estate but distribution. This means that the 31% is really only for personal loans and that the banks are more exposed to the real estate sector than may at first appear. Since commercial properties are on average much more expensive than residential housing, President Jagdeo may have been far too quick and way off target to lightly dismiss concerns about a potential housing bubble.

Banking resilience
What the Bank of Guyana 2010 Report unambiguously discloses is that the total assets of the commercial banks at December 31, 2010 amounted to $296 billion of which total loans and advances were $112 billion, or approximately 38%. On the other hand foreign assets owned by the commercial banks at December 31, 2010 alone amounted to $47 billion, investments in central government were $67 billion and amounts with or claims on Bank of Guyana of $45 billion.

This is more than enough to weather any drastic decrease in real estate prices and prevent any shocks. It would mean however that the value of the banks’ securities and the matching lending would decrease, their profitability and tax obligations would fall, and their overall lending framework would alter. But as we saw some years ago in the rice crisis, and are even now seeing in the US, banks can be extremely resilient and have a remarkable capacity to recover, even from the sternest of tests.

Next week I will look at the implications for the non-bank financial institutions of any sharp decline in the housing market and any other dark clouds hovering over the horizon. As one is always forced to do with matters concerning the Ministry of Housing, I will also ask where all the money for these land sales has gone.

Posted on

Nandalall should direct his advice to Jagdeo, not Kissoon

In a letter appearing in Sunday Kaieteur News July 31 and captioned “Mr. Kissoon is treading on dangerous waters”, Mr. Anil Nandlall, signing as “MP and Attorney-at-Law for His Excellency, President Bharrat Jagdeo”, seeks to offer advice to Mr. Kissoon and threatens contempt of court proceedings over comments made by Mr. Kissoon in his Kaieteur News column.

Mr. Nandlall knows that Mr. Kissoon is represented in the relevant matter by two Attorneys-at-law, with a third soon to be added. As one of those attorneys I would respectfully suggest to Mr. Nandlall that he should spare himself and our client such gratuitous advice and instead direct it to his client, the President, who makes a habit of commenting, like Sir Oracle, on matters that are sub judice.

I wonder if Mr. Nandlall, as a regular attorney-at-law for the President, has cautioned his client of the impropriety of such interventions. If he has, it would be helpful to readers if Mr. Nandlall would comment on an article appearing in Stabroek News of July 30, in which the President makes loaded references to criminal charges against a person involved in a matter in which the President as Minister of Information is currently adjudicating.

Guyanese are aware of the numerous occasions on which Mr. Nandlall’s client has shown contempt for our courts as well as our constitution. His client now demonstrates in the complaint against CNS 6 unmistakable bias and rank abuse of Presidential power, a combination so egregious as to make any comment by Mr. Kissoon pale in comparison.

Finally while Mr. Nandlall seems unable to refer to Mr. Jagdeo without the title His Excellency, I would like to remind him that his instructions were to bring the action against Mr. Kissoon in the name Bharrat Jagdeo, which he did.