CORRUPTION HAS BECOME A MONSTER!

Mar 09, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Guyana’s failure to qualify for further support under the Millennium Challenge Account should be seen as an opportunity rather than a setback.
It allows the government to address one of the serious concerns of international agencies when dealing with small developing countries.
That concern is corruption. The public cannot be fooled by the window- polishing that is taking place in an attempt to spruce up the image of Guyana in terms of transparency.
It will require much more than what is being done; and there are many in Guyana who feel that not much is being done.
Following the demise of communism, the western countries rushed to impose their brand of democracy throughout the world.
But democracy has historically never proven sufficient, not even in the developed world, to curtail officials, their friends and cronies from ravishing the public treasury.
This is one of the reasons why following the democratic wave that followed the collapse of communism, the West concentrated its energies on other areas such as institutional building. For the greatest safeguards against corruption and other abuses of power come through strong institutional checks.
In Guyana, the West saw its initial priorities as developing stronger administrative mechanisms. This was not without justification since the brain drain compounded by square pegs in round holes, along with scarce resources, had denuded the administrative capacity of the country.
The West felt that rebuilding this capacity was a priority. However, at the same time this increased capacity was being institutionalised, huge inflows were necessary to jump start the economy.
Thus, in the midst of weak administrative and institutional systems, increased loans and grants were being plugged into Guyana. This opened the floodgates to corruption from which Guyana has not recovered.
Over the past years a great many scandals were exposed. And despite these shocking revelations, enough was not being done to help reverse this plague.
One of the reasons may have been that these acts were linked to individuals and it may have been felt that simply removing the individuals would end the corruption. It has not. Corruption has become a monster.
The solution has to be to deepen institutional changes that can check corruption. While institutional mechanisms will not eliminate corruption, they will at least help to reduce corruption and provide some breathing space for the government until stronger systems are put in place.
Unfortunately the government has been shooting itself in its feet by not moving more assertively in implementing some of the reforms that are necessary. Foremost among these is the need for additional judges and magistrates within the judicial system to deal with the large backlog and allow for more effective and timelier prosecution of corruption.
The government has begun to implement a justice administration reform process but this as usual will end, as most other projects have ended, with the bulk of the resources finding its ways into the hands of consultants. The net effect of the reforms will be negligible.
The government has passed a Public Procurement Act but has failed to implement the critical Public Procurement Commission. Whatever the excuses, the government has to assume ownership of the problem and explain to the international community why further loans and grants should be disbursed in the absence of the commission.
It is time that the international community reads the riot act to the government and insists that until such time as the commission is in place there will be restrictions on the approval of loans and grants.
The Office of the Auditor General is supposed to be an important check against corruption. But this Office does not have a substantive head.
It is woefully understaffed and is unable to effectively discharge its mandate because of these constraints. How can any government boast about transparency when the Office of the Auditor General suffers from so many constraints?
And yet ironically, one of the earlier institutional capacity building programmes funded by the international community was for the strengthening of this office. What this shows is that most of the foreign consultants have been over their heads when it comes to understanding what is required in Guyana.
The first requirement has to be an investment in people. Building nice offices and buildings is secondary to attracting and retaining the rights skills.
And simply allowing short- term consultants to come and improve systems will not work because when they leave what happens?
On a recent television programme, Chris Ram spoke about the billions of dollars that were spent on a National Competitiveness Strategy. What tangible outcomes have emerged from that investment? A few reports?
Why spend all this money when the government still has the authority to grant to select individuals, concessions that can be used to give those investors an advantage over established local businesses. In short, the concessions can be used to bring down the cost of production and not just allow the beneficiaries to out-compete local companies but also outbid them in tendering for government contracts.
There has to be concerted lobby to the international financial institutions to insist on certain things being in place before further loans are disbursed to Guyana. All the money in the world is not going to save Guyana from this monster unless locally there are the mechanisms to fight it.
Finding the mechanisms does not require another foreign –funded project. It just requires political will to appoint a National Procurement Commission, ten new judges and twenty new magistrates and double the salaries of the staff of the Office of the Auditor General.

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