Examining David Hinds’ statement of Africans accommodating PPP ‘bribery’

Apr 13, 2013 Letters

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Dear Editor,
David Hinds’ letter “Balancing is taking place at the top of the armed forces” (SN, March 29, 2013) made a provocative and powerful statement as follows: “The PPP’s decision to seemingly incorporate bribery of Africans as an integral part of its mode of governance coupled with the  ease with which Africans of all classes accommodate to that phenomenon represent a dimension of our ethnic dynamics that is silenced by African Guyanese opposition politicians and the media, who are afraid of being labelled racist.”
Accommodation and ‘bribery’ of their own ethnicities and other ethnicities by the two race parties (PPP and PNC) when they held power is a common fact. It is the notorious way they do business.
This psychological and immoral accommodation, Hinds highlights, is limited to only a minority of those Indians or Africans because often, that is all that is required and also due to the fact that the largesse of executive power can only extend so far.
This accommodation extends to both Indians and Africans serving race parties and being elevated or rewarded or ‘bribed’ by those parties. One could accuse the PNC of ‘bribing’ some of the most brilliant Indians Guyana has produced. There are some who were PPP backers who were ‘bribed’ to the PNC just like there is a cabal of PNC mid-level leaders who were ‘bribed’ over to the PPP.
‘Bribery’ includes perks, promotion above more deserving peers, protection from prosecution, guarantees of career and professional advancement, better financial emoluments or compensation packages and other measures and means.
Although ‘bribery’ and accommodation have been disgusting facets of our nation’s kowtowing to dictatorship and wrongdoing, there have been pivotal differences in these elements under the PNC and PPP.
Firstly, ‘bribery’ and accommodation are greater under the PPP in these state entities because the PPP does not control membership of most state institutions and apparatuses and because the PPP cannot decimate these institutions without devastating consequences, both politically and militarily.
These institutions are vital for the functioning of the state and for the executive to hold and exercise meaningful power. Africans have a dominant presence in these institutions such as civil service and armed forces. So, an Indian-dominated PPP engages in more intense ‘bribery’ to win control of these institutions.
These are hierarchical institutions, meaning that they will follow handpicked leadership, no matter how peeved they are about them, and the PPP uses this reality to its advantage.
Unlike the PNC, which only had to ‘bribe’ the leadership atop these institutions because the regular membership wholly supported the PNC, the PPP has to ‘bribe’ more levels and more lower levels of these institutions.
Secondly, ‘bribery’ and accommodation are easy to achieve for various reasons. There are those who are afraid of losing their jobs on executive whims and accede to ‘bribery’. Others see it as an opportunity to leapfrog better qualified colleagues. Some will accommodate for fear of losing tenure, sinecure, position and power.
The very fact that these positions can be terminated by executive order signals to these individuals holding them that they are beholden to the state.
Then there is arguably the biggest reason; financial and economic. Many fear losing their jobs and the many years they have invested in it in an economy strafed by high unemployment.
Having worked under low-paying PNC and PPP governments, most public service workers lack credible savings, disposable income and investable income to break free from the economic trap that is their job.
This leads to economic vulnerability and financial dependency, which makes them more ‘bribeable’ and more accommodating to executive recklessness and lawlessness.
As long as Africans continue to be the dominant pool of employees in a public service masterminded by an Indian-dominated government with despotic tendencies, they will be psychologically tortured, morally insulted and constantly demanded to demean themselves. Indians avoided this trap under the PNC because they did not possess viable strength in public sector employment. This afforded them financial independence or even in poverty, the ability to operate outside of the state apparatus.
Not only has the PPP corrupted the public service and some within the public service have corrupted themselves in supine service to the PPP, the insult has been exacerbated by the PPP’s ethnic favouritism in the middle and upper management levels of the public service and its creation of a parallel contract worker public service, which it wants taxpayers to hand over $7.8 billion (US$39 million at $33,017 per taxpayer) to pay in super salaries to cronies doing political work disguised as the nation’s work.
So, the PPP has not only gone on a massive bribing exercise to win over leadership of the traditional African-dominated civil and public service and placed disproportionate Indians into middle and upper management levels of an African-dominated traditional public service, the PPP has also created a poodle class of contract workers that form the parallel Indian-dominated and PPP-party membership, mostly contract worker public service that is better paid than the traditional public service.
This is a colossal waste heaped on the waste of money funding an inefficient and bloated traditional public service.
Finally, while bribery of and accommodation by Africans is easier to achieve with Africans working in state institutions, there is also significant bribery of and accommodation by Indians occurring in Guyana outside of the public service institutions.
There are Indians selling their souls to join the PPP and just like some Africans, they are economically driven or caught in party hierarchical traps too.
The majority of the parallel contract worker public service fits this bill of the acquiescing types.
There are many within the PPP who are deathly afraid of speaking out for fear of losing their cushy positions or for fear of retaliation. There are some within the PPP who want to leave but cannot because they are blackmailed. Others are denied because they take moral positions.
The PNC and PPP have damaged the ethical and moral fabric of this country and buried the moral core of this land. Both Africans and Indians are trapped under this shameful PPP ‘bribery’ just like they were submerged under the PNC ‘bribery’.
The accommodation from all races in Guyana is a symptom of the moral destruction of this nation. It is difficult for people to challenge their very existence but when your existence has been completely degraded by political nastiness, the mere will to survive is not enough. Something more is necessary.
M. Maxwell

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