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‘Subsidies’ is an economic concept which takes many forms

I wonder whether, if Mr R Ravie Ramcharitar had understood the terms “benefit from” and “subsidized,” he would have written a letter (‘The Guyana Times competes in an open market for advertising, including government advertising’ SN, September 30 ), so laced with misplaced venom and ill-advised reasoning. The term “benefit from” referred to the use of facilities subject to subsidised rentals, duty, and other illegal tax concessions given by President Jagdeo to the Ramroop company Queens Atlantic Investment Inc. (QAII). Mr Ramcharitar should tell us whether Guyana Times Inc is paying market rent, in which case QAII is improperly and immorally exploiting concessions granted by the state – as done by another prominent investor – or is charging rent based on cost which included subsidies in various forms. It is a case of lose-lose for Mr Ramcharitar and his principals.

Second, ‘subsidies’ is an economic concept which takes many forms, including cash disbursements, tax exemptions, preferential exchange rates, governmental contracts with special privileges, and other favourable treatment. Is it not obvious then that advertising by a government to a start-up newspaper that dares not disclose its total circulation, let alone the components of its circulation, falls into that category? What are these prestige advertisements that Guyana Times attracts? Are these the 20% GINA advertisements – in addition to direct government ads – which cannot be justified and certainly not on the basis of any normal circulation criteria?

And what is this about superior circulation and readership among the business and professional community? Since Mr Ramcharitar is so confident about his “facts,” I am sure he would not hesitate to share them with his “superior readership.”

I am disappointed that Mr Ramcharitar would put his name to a letter that so casually deems others as malicious, fearful or jealous. Of whom or of what? Of the real beneficiaries of the PPP/C and President Jagdeo’s largesse, including subsidised land at Pradoville, but who dare not sign such a letter? And was it fear that caused Mr Ramcharitar not even to acknowledge that the identical letter by me appeared in the Kaieteur News as in the Stabroek News? Is his company afraid of the Kaieteur News or is there a more dangerous subliminal prejudice against Stabroek News at work here?

Finally let me say how much I am looking forward to examining a copy of Guyana Times’ annual return and accounts for 2008 which I had hoped the directors would have filed by now. Or is exemption from the statutory filing another concession enjoyed by the Ramroop companies?

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IFRS for SMEs: One cheer for the accounting profession!

Introduction
After more than six years of drafting, consultations, redrafting, deliberations, field testing and debates across a number of countries of the world, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the body responsible for international standard-setting for the accounting profession, has issued an International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) designed for use by small and medium-sized entities (SMEs). Guyana is a member of the International Federation of Accountants and such standards automatically apply to Guyana.

The accounting regulator in Guyana, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana is now considering adoption. While it has not pronounced on the new standard it is expected that the standard would be available for use in the 2009 financial statements of all Guyanese SMEs. While not the most satisfactory situation, some members of the accounting profession have opined that even in the absence of such pronouncement, businesses and their auditors should take the lead and apply the new standard immediately.

The release of the new IFRS should be seen as one of the most welcome developments and contribution of the accounting profession in modern times. It simplifies many of the rules governing the preparation, contents and presentation of financial statements for all but a dozen or so of our companies. Up to this time the same rules that applied to the multi-billion dollar company like Demerara Distillers Limited also applied to the small one person operation – a requirement that is expensive, impracticable and nonsensical. The financial sector would be particularly gratified as the new standard removes one of the excuses of the profession about the cost, time and complexity involved in the preparation of financial statements submitted to them in support of credit applications and renewal.

The IFRS for SMEs is a self-contained standard of about 230 pages tailored for the needs and capabilities of smaller businesses. Many of the principles in full IFRSs for recognising and measuring assets, liabilities, income and expenses have been simplified, topics not relevant to SMEs have been omitted, and the number of required disclosures has been significantly reduced.

Main features
The following principal changes to existing accounting rules for SMEs arising from the new IFRS are highlighted:

1. Some topics in IFRSs are omitted because they are not relevant to the typical SMEs. These include: earnings per share; interim financial reporting; segment reporting; and special accounting for assets held for sale. To the extent that they do apply, non-mandatory reference could be made to the existing IFRS’s, which does compromise the stand-alone precept.

2. Some accounting policy options permitted under full IFRSs are not allowed under the SME IFRS because a more simplified method is available under the new standard. These include: financial instrument options including available-for-sale, held-to-maturity and fair value options; the revaluation model for property, plant and equipment and for intangible assets; proportionate consolidation for investments in jointly controlled entities; for investment property, measurement is driven by circumstances rather than allowing an accounting policy choice between the cost and fair value models; and various options for government grants.

I have highlighted the revaluation issue because this has become a common practice in Guyana following our experience with hyper-inflation in the late seventies and eighties.

3. Recognition and measurement simplifications: The main simplifications to the recognition and measurement principles in full IFRSs include the accounting principles and disclosure rules for financial instruments; goodwill and other indefinite life intangible assets which must be amortised over their estimated useful lives (ten years if useful life cannot be estimated reliably); research and development costs which must be recognised as expenses; borrowing costs which must be recognised as expenses; property, plant and equipment and intangible assets; and defined benefit plans the past service cost of which must be recognised immediately in profit or loss while all actuarial gains and losses must be recognised immediately either in profit or loss or other comprehensive income.

4. Substantially fewer disclosures: No longer should the financial statements look like a formidable book written in a language to confuse rather than inform. Pro-forma financial statements compatible with the new IFRS have been developed and published by the IASB and are available on their website.

5. Simplified redrafting: A significant feature of the new standard is that it will only be subject to triennial reviews so that there is more certainty and uniformity in the preparation and presentation of financial statements. No need to worry about annual reviews and changes and the implications for comparative figures. Hopefully as well, instead of spending a whole lot of time on what was essentially non-added value work, auditors will assist their clients in offering advice on internal controls and business issues.

Definition
One of the main questions that obviously came to mind in developing the new standard is what will be considered an SME, since there was no agreed or universally accepted definition. SMEs come in many shapes and shades and it would be a challenge for the profession and the law to capture in a single definition the range of such entities. An SME in a developed country could be a major player in a developing one and therefore a definition based on quantitative factors such as number of employees or level of sales was rejected.

An SME is defined in the standard as an entity which publishes general purpose financial statements for external users but does not have public accountability. An entity has public accountability if (a) its debt (borrowings) or equity (shares) instruments are traded in a public market or it is in the process of issuing such instruments for trading in a public market; or (b) it holds assets in a fiduciary capacity for a broad group of outsiders as one of its primary businesses. All companies traded on the Guyana Stock Exchange, banks, insurance companies, securities brokers/dealers, unit trusts, etc, would be considered to have public accountability and cannot therefore prepare their financial statements using the IFRS for SMEs.

What about those SMEs that seem to be neither fish nor fowl and how do we deal with the public interest companies for which special reporting requirements are desirable? Where for example does a Guysuco, a GPL or a GT&T come, and are consumers any less important than investors?

The IASB considered whether to include in the definition of public accountability those companies which provide an essential public service such as a public utility. Respondents to the discussion paper however felt that in many jurisdictions such entities could be very small.

Consideration was also given to those entities which were economically significant in their home jurisdiction but the IASB felt that “economic significance may be more relevant to matters of political and societal accountability” and therefore felt that the final decision should be left to the individual jurisdictions.

Time for action
The issue of this standard should be addressed not only by the accounting profession in relation to its clients but by the Ministry of Finance, the Guyana Revenue Authority and the lending community. The Companies Act envisaged that the Minister of Finance would set certain levels of income, assets or staff below which the requirement of the audit of a company could be dispensed with. The act has now been on the law books for eighteen years but no such pronouncement has been done. It is time that this be done.

The Guyana Revenue Authority too has to consider whether it should be insisting that a one-man company with a small turnover and few assets should require an audit but the multi-billion dollar self-employed person does not. Yes, it is a legislative matter but it is up to the GRA to make recommendations based on practice and experience.

The lending community now has an opportunity to decide whether it will continue to accept some of the sloppily and inaccurately prepared financial statements submitted in support of lending applications or whether it will now sit with its clients and the accounting profession and insist on a higher standard of accounting and reporting. The accounting profession locally has generally been very slow and a ditherer on the occasions on which leadership was required. It should now piggy-back on the initiative of its international brotherhood – for that is what it is – and take decisive action on this matter to justify the wide powers it enjoys under statute.

Conclusion
The new IFRS is clearly both an opportunity and a challenge and to use that overdone term, every stakeholder should see and use this to rectify many of the serious mistakes that have been perpetrated and tolerated for decades.

Mistakes that have caused the loss of billions of dollars of revenue to the state, the loss of reputation of a profession that has become associated with tax evasion and aggressive tax planning and the inability of the layperson to read and understand financial statements, an important requirement for a developing capital market.

At the same time, the new IFRS is not a panacea and outstanding issues such as corporate governance, money-laundering, tax evasion and poor and unethical standards of accounting and auditing will remain to be addressed. This new IFRS is however welcomed by Business Page as a useful development. One cheer for the accounting profession!

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What’s happening at the New Building Society?

Introduction
How can a financial institution that just a few months ago boasted about a “liquidity of 40% of the total assets or 47% of members’ funds, a position exceeding the approved industry standard” – whatever that means – suddenly start telling current and potential loan customers to come back in six to eight months time? That is what a staff member of Ram & McRae was told after he had applied for a modest loan from the New Building Society. When he related this to me I thought he had it wrong and suggested that he return to the Society and seek confirmation and some details. He came back with the same message. Then someone contacted me from abroad complaining that his mother had a similar experience. I said that I had heard of reports of the NBS restricting lending. Then I received a letter dated September 15, 2009 purportedly from a member of the staff complaining generally about the state of the Society and that “since August the Society had stopped giving loans and has been telling loan applicants to go to GBTI or Republic Bank.”

I have independently confirmed this, which the commercial banks have found a dramatic reversal from the position not too long ago, where the NBS was actually poaching the banks’ commercial customers with the lure of lower interest rates made possible by the tax exempt status of the Society. What then is the cause of this development whereby the Society has ceased or severely restricted loans, described only a few months ago by the Society’s Chairman Dr Nanda Gopaul as its core business? In fact Dr Gopaul had earlier gone further, boasting of the reduction of mortgage rates from January 1, 2009 to 6.95% and 4.95%, in the case of low income loans.

Again quoting the Chairman from the 2008 Annual Report, “the Society has always adopted responsible and prudent approaches to its operations to counter any adverse development in the economic and financial environment.” What indeed could have gone so wrong so quickly that persons are now seeking advice on whether or not to withdraw their money from the Society and why the inaction from the ever so silent Bank of Guyana and the not usually silent Chairman Dr. Gopaul?

Bad governance
I wrote the Society’s Director Secretary asking him to provide me with unaudited half-year financials for this column but he has not even acknowledged my letter. He is part of the same board that complains that commentators and analysts should first contact them before writing.

So, is it that the rules are so restrictive that the Society cannot lend or is it the result of what concerned members of the Society have feared as bad governance by a team of seven with no prior experience of a private sector organisation let alone a multi-billion dollar financial institution? Forced by the media to comment on the development, Dr Gopaul gave as the reason for the sudden and unannounced development “the result of a One Stop Shop campaign by the Ministry of Housing and Water wherein numerous persons are being issued with house lots.” The reality of course is that the ministry has been giving many more house lots for more than a decade and there was no cessation of loans to existing members, so that explanation has a hollow ring about it.

Debt/mortgages
Senior staff members of the Society have been advancing a totally different reason which can have serious implications for the Society – and that is a hardly ever considered provision on the New Building Society Act. A proviso to section 7 of the act restricts to no more than two-thirds, the relationship between the aggregate of deposit and loans raised, and the amount of mortgage loans by the Society. In other words if there is $100 out on mortgages, the Society should take in on deposits and/or raise by way of loans, no more than $66. Mortgage loans at December 31, 2008 amounted to $19 billion so that amount of deposits (there were no loans raised by the Society) at that date should have been no more than $12.7 billion. The rest it seems should be raised by way of equity. Under what appears to have been the broad definition used by the Society over the decades, deposits amounted to $30 billion at December 31, 2008, an excess of $17 billion, if the proviso is applied.

As I sought to assimilate this provision I realised that it was as elegant a formulation of the thin capitalisation rule as I have ever seen. The problem it was designed to prevent is the Society having customers’ deposits and lenders’ loans tied up in long-term assets beyond a certain level, so that even a significant level of withdrawal should not have a fatal effect on the Society’s operations.

Logic and rationale
To understand the logic one also needs to understand the rationale behind the New Building Society Act. It certainly was not to support any government policy or to make commercial loans, as this current Board seems to think. Under section 6 of the NBS Act the Society is a “Housing Association for purposes of the Housing Act” which defines a housing association to include a society whose objects include the construction, improving or managing or facilitating or encouraging the construction or improvement of houses for the working class.” These are not my words but those of the act and it was on that basis – referred to in taxation jargon as mutual trading – that the NBS has been granted tax-exempt status. One has to wonder whether the Minister of Finance Dr Ashni Singh considers this provision when he authorises increasing lending limits well beyond the reach of the working class. An earlier statement by Chairman Gopaul calling for a significant increase in the lending limit “in an effort to meet the demands for the construction of more middle income houses” shows that he is not too familiar with the NBS Act or its mandate.

Aggressive management
And this is, if not entirely, certainly a big part of the problem. In 2005, the largest loans accounted for $105 million; now it is $234 million. More dangerously, they now include what are patently commercial loans granted to persons with good connections, but at least one of whom left a bad record with the GNCB. Because the Bank of Guyana seems impotent in regulating the Society there is, unlike for the commercial banks, no single borrower restriction so that one borrower can abuse the single loan limit. Had the rules which apply to the banks applied to the Society, it would not have been able to make the Bridge investment, plain and simple.

Another development is the spirited efforts to attract deposits with offers of rates of interest that suggest that the Society is willing to offer very high rates on borrowed funds. That is never a good sign and one only has to look at recent experiences at Clico and Stanford to appreciate the inherent danger. In fact the rates currently being offered by the Society are almost in line with what is being charged on the low-cost housing loans, so that on a total cost basis, those loans have minimal or no profitability. Not only is this strategy dangerous, but it also means that sooner rather than later, the rates charged even on existing loans and mortgages would escalate with consequences for affordability and considerable bad debts. Again we note the lack of urgency with which the Bank of Guyana has approached the NBS which operates without any statutory deposit or loan provisioning guideline to which commercial banks are subject.

The Bridge and the Head Office
Then we come to that other serious and questionable matter – the purchase of Berbice River Bridge Bonds of $1.5 billion dollars to help bail out the sinking Clico whose CEO and the NBS Chairman are fellow directors on the Guysuco Board. The Bridge has not achieved the optimistic revenues projected and many suspected that the belated payment of interest on its bonds for 2008 was made to stem concerns about its viability. Let us recall that Mr Winston Brassington who used some very unorthodox methods to raise money for the Bridge Company was a prominent attendee at the NBS’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Cotton Tree earlier this year at which he played up the performance of the Bridge. Nothing more has since been heard about that performance and efforts to obtain a copy of the company’s 2008 annual report from Mr Brassington and the Bridge Company’s Vice-Chairman were referred to its CEO who did not take or return any of my calls. So much for transparency and accountability.

The NBS Board, made up almost entirely of persons close to the ruling party, has shown a remarkable stubbornness that in normal circumstances would guarantee their removal. The way the NBS is run is certainly not normal. The directors have illegally refused to carry out the mandate of the last AGM for the repatriation of the Society’s Pounds Sterling investments and more than likely, the setting up of a Loans Sub-Committee, both of which may have helped to prevent or at least minimise the current problems in the Society.

They are persisting with the construction of a new Head Office with no firm arrangements for the disposal of the current one. With the large network of branches being constructed the pressure on the existing Head Office would have reduced significantly but the Society is set to spend close to $900 million on a spanking new structure with no customer parking! The combination of the politically expedient investment in the Bridge Bonds coming right on the heels of the $900 million Head Office and the unwillingness to repatriate the Sterling Investments explains why the Society is in its current mess.

Another misjudgment of the board is yet to be made public but members should worry about developments following the decision by the board prior to the last AGM to change the long-standing auditors Jack A. Alli, Sons & Company in preference for a relatively new auditing partnership, Solomon and Parmessar. This partnership is splitting up even before it can complete a single audit and the board, which has not a single accountant among its seven, would now have to decide whether to go with one or the other of the partners, or indeed go back to its former auditors, the reason for whose removal was never shared with the members.

Conclusion
It is hard not to worry about the sloth of the Bank of Guyana in relation to the NBS. The central bank appears to have learnt nothing from Globe Trust and Clico which it now supervises. It has categorically refused to meet members of the Society whose fears have proved more than justified and it has been promising for close to ten years to bring the NBS under its supervision.

Members of the Society may need to consider how best to protect their funds and the Society from those whose management of it seems dangerously lacking. I would caution against any precipitate action by members however and am yet hopeful that the directors would get to grips with reality. The board needs to do something to reassure members that they have the situation under control.

Note: I am a former member of the Board of the NBS.

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New anti-money laundering act in place – or is it?

Introduction
After two years before a Special Select Committee, new anti-money laundering legislation was passed by the National Assembly on April 30, 2009 and assented to by the President on August 14, 2009, a gap of close to one hundred days. Given the track record of the President in assenting to legislation presented to him, these dates are relevant. Under Article 170 the President must notify the Parliament within 21 days of the date of presentation to him of the bill any reason for withholding his assent. Logically then if the President is not refusing, he should assent within 21 days. No reason has ever been given for the delay.

Not only is this new legislation more than about the prevention of money laundering – it is also about countering the financing of terrorism. And that is why I think that barring some mini-miracle, this Act will be as little-used as the predecessor Act (the Money Laundering (Prevention) Act 2000) which is now repealed. In a submission I made to the Select Committee I wrote that the bill is an immensely complex piece of legislation covering some one hundred and fifteen sections – it is now one hundred and sixteen – and will require several pieces of supplementary legislation to support it. I did not use the words “to make it work” because given the country’s capacity, I did not consider that the bill if passed in its present form would be enforceable. Our parliamentarians are a stubborn lot who have learnt little from their past experience.

Sun-Tai-Lees
While Guyanese have been told, not without some justification, that the previous anti-money laundering legislation had deficiencies and was short of some important provisions, the new Act simply has too many. And what was it short of? Seizure yes, but just look at the Narcotics Act and see who is caught. In my view, it is not that the former Act was bad but that there was no real effort at making it work. I do not recall a single piece of subsidiary legislation passed under the Act and the hand-picked Director of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) was reported in the Stabroek News of Monday, January 8, 2007 as saying that he did not wish to speak to the media on the work that the FIU was doing.

The new Act is largely imported legislation in which almost fifty sections are concerned with the international fight against terrorism but which completely ignores our domestic circumstances. The New York courts have exposed the huge amounts of narco-money that have been flowing into and out of Guyana by well-known Guyanese, and yet the FIU and other agencies concerned with illegally obtained gains have failed to prosecute even one of the perpetrators over the course of more than five years. Some of the streets and areas in Guyana are as well-known for washing dirty money as Sun-Tai-Lee was renowned for cleaning dirty linen. And some non-bank cambios operate with their own laws and rules of accountability facilitating all forms of laundering including widespread tax evasion. Why did we not use the law as it existed, given that we have had a unit specifically set up to deal with that? And why did the Select Committee not try to find answers to these questions? In fact it seems that the committee was almost entirely dependent on that person who appears to have actively participated in the proceedings of the committee.

Shared responsibilities and cosmetics
The Select Committee met on fifteen occasions under the chairmanship of the Minister of Finance who shares ministerial responsibility for this Act with the Minister of Legal Affairs. At the end of the process, however, the bill remained largely intact with many of the changes being no more than cosmetic. Inserting one word here and another word there is hardly what one would expect from a group of a dozen Members of Parliament working for over two years. With no disrespect meant, many of the changes made to the original draft, were the type that a careful editor or draftsperson makes. It did not need twelve wise persons sitting around for hundreds of hours. A similar, notable precedent was the poorly drafted Value-Added Tax Bill in which the only changes accepted by another Select Committee from the substantial submission by the Private Sector Commission were refinements to inadequate drafting. I would mention too the Companies Act 1991, which has shared responsibility but which has remained almost unchanged despite some glaring deficiencies. One fears a repetition of such inaction.

It seems that in common with everything else, the committee was hampered by political loyalty trumping professional judgment. During my presentation to the Select Committee I could not help but notice the contrast between the openness of the members from the parliamentary opposition and the rigid positions taken by those from the government side. I remember in particular being castigated by one member from the government side for making a comment that he often makes, not only privately but publicly as well, so great is the political spell under which some persons seem to fall. The membership of the Select Committee reflects the proportion of seats in the National Assembly so the views of the members of the PPP/C almost invariably prevail.

Bureaucracy, reporting entities and activities
Section 9 of the legislation gives to the FIU powers and duties, some of which are mandatory and others within its discretion, but even if only some of these were to be carried out with minimum efficiency, it would require a significant bureaucracy and budget which the government may be unwilling or unable to finance. Will we again go begging external donors? Just look at how the government has had the Stock Exchange, the Securities Council and the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance struggling for funds. Why would the government be more serious on money-laundering when political parties in the past were known beneficiaries of laundered and illicit money? In fact when the history of money-laundering in Guyana is written it will be found that political parties and key trade unions were the earliest players in the money laundering game, and there is no reason to suggest that some of that no longer exists.

Under the Act the reporting entities are classified under two broad headings – Financial Institutions and Designated Non-financial Business or Profession. Financial businesses are mainly those engaged in banking and financial business while the second category includes casinos, betting shops and lotteries when their customers engage in financial transactions in excess of $500,000. It includes dealers in precious metals, accountants and attorneys acting in relation to specific activities, trustees etc.

The activities subject to the Act are wide-ranging and include finance leasing, credit unions and advisory services including undertakings on capital structure which is part of the daily fare of attorneys-at-law and accountants. Included as well are cambios, pawn-broking, used cars dealers, exporters and importers of valuable items and dealers in real estate.

Section 18 of the Act places an obligation on reporting entities to pay special attention to suspicious transactions and to report promptly such transactions to the FIU. Which cambio dealer would feel safe that he can report an approach from one of our drug lords or which pawnbroker would have the resources to set up the mechanism for detecting suspicious transactions?

It seems that the only people who have taken the prevention of money-laundering seriously are the financial institutions. Only today I asked a prominent real estate agent how he was coping with the Act. His response was a blank stare. I have no doubt that the same would be true of many pawnbrokers, accountants and lawyers. And why should we believe that accountants who help their clients to duck income from the taxman would report his clients to the Financial Intelligence Unit? And is it likely to be any different with the lawyer who manufactures documents for the benefit of his client? It is time for us to get real.

Conclusion
One of my biggest concerns about the Act is that its architects consider that the FIU is a role which can be carried out by a single person operating with an accountant, (it is not stated whether this is required to have a professional qualification) and an attorney at law along with one support staff member. I am aware that the Barbados model was commended to the committee but obviously ignoring any fears about corruption it has decided not to follow the Barbados model which has at the supervisory level a Anti-Money Laundering Authority comprising the Commissioner of Police, the heads of Income Tax and Customs, the Supervisor of Insurance, the Registrar of Corporate Affairs and representatives of the Governor of the Central Bank and the Solicitor General. This is clearly not a function which should be placed under a single person accountable to a minister. It may be particularly helpful to examine the Barbados model.

One serious weakness in the Act is that it does not appear to require the investigation of the source of funds of “foreign investors” some of whom are engaged in the international laundering of money.

The Act has been passed but it is practically useless without the necessary regulations for the various sectors and activities it covers. Until these are done, except for the financial institutions, there is really a gap – albeit temporary – in anti-money laundering activities. It is remarkable but during the past year there has been growing evidence of massive money laundering. Until we get serious the launderers are having a field day.

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Drivers of presidential vehicles behaved inappropriately

Last Sunday afternoon at around 4.30 I was driving west along Carifesta Avenue, when I heard the approaching sounds of a siren and almost instantaneously was overtaken by four speeding presidential vehicles including the one bearing the presidential crest. Having duly pulled up, I then continued on my way when, just before the traffic lights at Camp and Lamaha Streets, I saw one of the cars with its driver’s door open and the driver under a tree chatting with a young lady.

As if that were not bad enough, as I proceeded along Lamaha Street I saw another of the presidential vehicles veer dangerously towards a man who, as I got closer, I recognised as a mechanic I know by the name ‘Cappie.’ A moment later the driver alighted from his vehicle and approached Cappie threateningly. I stopped and warned the driver against assaulting the man whereupon I was told by the driver of the lead vehicle to go my way. I did not until I was satisfied that no direct harm had been done to the man.

Taking the behaviour of the drivers collectively, I could not help but wonder whether these state-owned, expensive vehicles and their staff may have been returning from a fete. One wonders too whether there is a protocol regarding the conduct of the drivers of the presidential vehicles and at the abuses and lawlessness in the name of the President. For those who pay their taxes and abide by the law such behaviour is an affront to good sense, decency and the rule of law.