by Denis Chabrol (Demerara Waves) Guyana on Monday suggested that sister Caribbean nations should wage a campaign against the authenticity of Transparent International’s corruption rankings, saying they were not scientific for media houses to use them to publish largely questionable stories.
“The Caribbean countries keep getting notoriety in the international media for havens of corruption and the number of articles that are printed showing that we have massive corruption in the Caribbean islands and we have to be offended by that as CARICOM countries,” Minister of Governance and Parliamentary Affairs, Gail Teixeira said Monday.
Ms Teixeira, who heads a 16- agency domestic coordinating mechanism for the United Nations Convention against Corruption and the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption, questioned Transparency International’s source of information to compile the Corruption Perception Index. “I, as a Guyanese and as a member of the government, we do not accept TI’s assessment of us. It is non-empirical, it is non-scientific and, therefore we do bot feel, as its value, that an organisation can have two or three unnamed persons in a country evaluate your country and put your country on a scale globally, “she said in address to the opening of the 9th Annual Conference of the Commonwealth Caribbean Association of Integrity Commissions and Anti-Corruption Bodies.
The United States, United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union are on record as collectively calling on Guyana to not only pass anti-corruption laws but enforce them.
