Which CARICOM Government is more scandal-hit?

Jul 04, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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One wonders what goes through the minds of CARICOM leaders when they hear the name, Guyana. How do people feel about us as a country?  All our neighbours have had their share of social and political instabilities but these irregularities and anomalies have been endured and these countries have moved on to greater progress.
I grew up hearing older folks speaking of terrible violence in Jamaica. The syndrome lives on in Kingston. There was an attempted military coup in Trinidad and years after, a violent take over of that country’s Parliament by the Muslimeen.
Things have gone quiet in the Caribbean Sea since those days in Trinidad. Governments come and go in the British West Indies in all states except Guyana. Racial voting keeps the ruling party in power but that is not the end of the story.
There is nothing wrong with a particular organisation being voted into power consecutively. It has happened in Ontario and elsewhere. Labour in the UK won three times in a row. The dilemma with Guyana is that bad governance is the order of the day.
When P.J. Patterson in Jamaica, Owen Arthur, in Barbados, Kenny Anthony, in St. Lucia, Sir Keith Mitchell in St. Vincent and other CARICOM Heads governed their respective territories, they hardly made news. The British-influenced constitutional arrangements observed meticulously in those states, made politics boring but stable.
In Guyana, the odd man stands out. Day after day, month after month, year after year, there are nasty, unbelievable, incredibly shameful scandals in the Government of Guyana that would make every, and I repeat, every other CARICOM nation go into a tailspin with the leadership losing its office.
CARICOM Heads have their respective lands to run. They cannot be bothered with and will not bother with Guyana’s political muck. All CARICOM political parties, those in power and those in the opposition, probably say to themselves; “Guyana as usual” when they hear about our endless perversities.
No wonder their citizens run down Guyanese, mistreat Guyanese, and their politicians always cheat on Guyana’s trade by violating CARICOM rules. What do these people think of us after they read that a Minister’s wife committed suicide and then a well known media personality in the television industry puts another interpretation to the episode?
A Government critic is openly assassinated in a style that makes one believe that the killers are not unknown to certain powerful people.
What do people in the Caribbean think of the Government of Guyana after President Jagdeo’s wife made open accusations against him of mistreatment? In describing her fate, she resorted to American lingo by calling her oppression, “high tech domestic abuse.”
Was she telling the truth? We cannot say no because her statements have not been met with a complete press release rebuttal from the President.
What do other CARICOM Heads think of our President when they read that a Presidential advisor was fighting with fistic fury at an international boxing match and the tussle took place in close physical proximity to where the President, other high Government officials and members of the diplomatic community were sitting?
What do the civil servants and politicians of CARICOM territories think of the quality of governance in Guyana when the tax bosses investigated a senior functionary of the Ministry of Finance and evidence came to light that he signed MORE (my emphasis) than fifty bogus duty free letters?
The fighter and the signer have not been disciplined. But that is not all. The Minister who suffered a tragedy referred to above made the news again when he was involved in an unsavoury incident in which a teenager was beaten up.
The scandals mount as the years tick by. Would the CARICOM citizens of any nation accept that a huge hotel complex will go up in their country but the President steadfastly and stubbornly refuses to tell his country who the investor(s) is/are?
Will any Prime Ministers of CARICOM survive if a confessed drug trafficker (about to be sentenced in the US) had so much leverage in the society that he was able to penetrate the upper echelons of the security forces and the government of the day? Then when wire-tapping operations of his lawyer revealed his connections it is just dismissed by the Government functionaries as if nothing, absolutely nothing happened.
What will the CARICOM citizens of a country say if they know that a bankrupt Caribbean company recouped some of its losses and paid the money to a select group of people and that information is top secret?
Surely, the CARICOM Heads must know what is taking place in tragic Guyana. But do they care?

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