Who will be the first? There has to be a first. There will be no first.

Oct 27, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The PPP has announced that it has established its own integrity machine to investigate acts of bad behaviour by its members – both senior and ordinary. It started off rather comically. A press conference was called to inform the nation and the usual silly behaviour took away from the publication.
With all the money the PPP spends on election campaigns, you would think by now it would have acquired the service of an experienced PR guru. Any public relations practitioner would tell you if you are going to announce the establishment of any organization, then you have to have in front of you the complete package. Mr. Rohee at his press conference didn’t have half of the package. Maybe just the skeleton.
First, Rohee could not name all the members of his new disciplinary mechanism; just two. Secondly, he couldn’t say when they would be named. Why then not wait until you have all the items in place then go public with what you have?
You are bound to invite ridicule when you call your press conference and you cannot provide important details. But by now this country is familiar with the unimpressive style of the PPP.
There must have been talk that this would go nowhere, because long ago, the PPP proclaimed that it had established an anti-corruption entity at its head office. Obviously it never existed, because if it did it caught no one and then just died a natural death.
Why this new formation? It could be related to the contemplation of a snap election. Despite the self-delusion cocoon it dwells in, the PPP must know that it is burdened with mountains of criticism from inside and outside of Guyana about corruption and abuse of power.
Herein lies the birth of the integrity thing. But realpolitik inside the PPP has murdered the formation even before it could walk. The function of an integrity committee at Freedom House is fraught with grave danger and it will not stay alive. It cannot. There has to be an indictment.
Who is going to be the first apparatchik to be hauled before the inquisition? There will be none.
If the PPP is going to collect a few underlings and investigate them to use as election propaganda, it will not work. The boomerang will have destructive consequences. It is like your regular drug world reality. Once a low level drug trafficker is disciplined, he brings down the whole house, because he feels he has been made a scapegoat. He knows those above are the worst culprits and they are not punished.
This is the realpolitik ghost inside the PPP. If you drag a low level regional councilor for corruption in front of your committee, he has information that can embarrass his higher comrades. If he feels he is being fed to the wolves, he will sing like a bird unless you threaten him with his life. He would refuse to be used because he would question why him and not the big bosses inside the party.
There is a whole school of second and third tier party leaders that have direct knowledge of who took a bribe, who is into corruption, who benefits from the underworld. Could the PPP take a chance and embarrass one of these underlings with public exposure? The answer is no. The party will not do it. And it will not do it for reasons why it has not done it in twenty-one years. It cannot pick on a wrong-doer without running the risk of the accused speaking out.
Just one example will suffice. Look what happened to Mr. Jagdeo after his common-law wife felt that she had enough.
Another strong factor that will kill the integrity circus is the very reason for bringing it into being. If it is an election game, then that very game will be its antithesis. Who is going to do the field work for the election campaign if you drag off party functionaries to be tried for indiscipline? The very party members who should be in front of the inquisition waiting to be given their sentence are drowning in miasmic depravities?
Corruption is so pervasive in the central corridors and in the NDCs that once a functionary is under investigation, other party stalwarts will rebel. They will become scared that they too will be used for election purposes. They will go to their respective party bosses and demand a halt to the inquiry. The big joke is that the party kings will have to agree, because they are buried deeper in the corruption mud.

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Who will be the first? There has to be a first. There will be no first.

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