Between the Carrot and the Stick

Apr 19, 2009 Editorial

The shooting of the Commissioner of Insurance (COI) and Judicial Manager of CLICO, Maria van Beek, raises some serious questions about where our politics is at and where it could end. The COI is an institution of our state – part of the bureaucracy that is supposed to ensure that the functions of that state are accomplished in the optimum manner.

In fact, the modern state and its bureaucracy are coterminous and cannot survive without each other. The politicians who compete periodically to control the state – and strut around as if they are the sine quo non of the whole kit and caboodle – could not govern without a bureaucratic class. Politicians come and go – the state goes on through the continuity of its bureaucracy. The success of the modern state in improving the living conditions of its citizenry would have been inconceivable without the development of a bureaucratic class.

This class, as its earliest theorists demonstrated, works through clearly stated detailed regulations promulgated by the political class to deliver the multitudinous array of services expected by the citizenry in the modern age. The bureaucrats, then, are the “universal class” of Hegel, that are supposed to be above the everyday petty disputes that engage the average citizen, concerned about just getting his “piece of the action”. The regulations that guide the bureaucrats are supposed to ensure impartiality in their dealings with the public and become a yardstick for measuring their possible variance from the expected standards.

Bureaucrats, after all, even with all their training, are human, and subject to all the frailties endemic to the human condition. In Guyana, as in other jurisdictions, both politicians and citizens attempt to influence bureaucrats in performing their duties so as to favour either their constituencies or themselves. The politicians generally have three options – either to change the rules of the game (the regulations), threaten the bureaucrats by menacing their job security or a combination of both. Guyana is very familiar with this routine.

During the PNC regime, bureaucrats were explicitly “re-educated” to become au fait with the new ideological orientation – enshrined in new regulations – and those who could not change had to go. We know to our cost in Guyana that once the bureaucrats drift from their impartial standards it is the beginning of a slippery slope that can end with the dissipation of the entire state.

While under the present dispensation such demands have disappeared, the appointment of political figures as Permanent Secretaries (the top bureaucrats in the Ministries) does indicate that there is a desire for the bureaucrats to be “guided” politically in their functioning. On the other hand, the instrument used universally by citizens to influence bureaucrats (not to mention the politicians) is the carrot of bribery. Under the PNC regime, corruption became so pervasive that it was almost institutionalized. Bribery became the standard methodology of interaction between citizen and bureaucrat; the bureaucrat did not even have to ask. It is very unfortunate that this culture has not yet been broken because it can also cripple the state.

And we arrive at the shooting of Mrs van Beek. This is unprecedented. While we do not have all the facts we do know that robbery was not the motive. With all the recent publicity given to the COI in the performance of her dual bureaucratic duty, and the possible financial implications, it is not at all unreasonable for the man-in-the-street to make the connection between those duties and the cold-blooded act. This act, for the first time in recent memory, could possibly mean that the physical stick – the ultimate one at that – is being resorted to, to influence a bureaucrat in performing her appointed duties.

We believe that if this is the case, and we hope it is not, the death of the state becomes a distinct possibility, with the chilling effect on bureaucratic impartiality. The officers of that other vital organ of the state – law and order – must move expeditiously to send a message that Guyana will not be sliding down that slope.

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