Behind the struggle

Jun 16, 2013 Editorial

The seemingly intractable battle between our political elites, according to some cynics, may be due to the clash of egos or the drive for power/wealth/status, which might very well boil down to the same thing. But even if this were the case, there would still remain the problem of mobilising voters to rally behind their standards in this age of democracy. Toward this end there is the demand for “equality”, in which some politicians might actually believe.
From this perspective, when we consider the call for a Procurement Commission to be established, it is justified by the claim that contracts awarded under the present
system are not being done “transparently” to ensure ‘equality”. Since governmental contracts account for such a huge chunk of our economic activities it is not surprising that there is so much heat generated over the issue.
But if we look a bit closer at the proposal, we wonder whether while a Procurement Commission, while necessary, might not be sufficient to ensure the attainment of the elusive holy grail of “equality”. One of the problems lies in the nature of the goal itself. In our Marxist-dominated climate in the years leading up to and after independence, “equality of outcome” was the cry as opposed to the “equality of opportunity”, which the British pushed in its later days of colonial rule.
Before that of course, the entire system was loaded in favour of the British and their proxies. Those who hanker for the return of the “white man” should remember this small, but not inconsequential, point.
But in the wake of the Washington Consensus doctrines that became our guiding stars in the last two decades, the mantra of “equality of opportunity” once more took centre stage. From the indignant effusions of the Opposition recently, it appears that the Procurement Commission, inserted in the new millennium at the insistence of the multi-laterals, will deliver equality of opportunity in the arena of government procurement. They assert that the government has gamed the Procurement Board and the ancillary mechanisms that were designed to satisfy the exact goal. They see a continued role of Cabinet also stymieing the road to equal opportunity. The Procurement Commission is the only device that will lead us to the promised land.
But there is one problem that is sure to surface even if the Procurement Commission were to succeed in delivering on the hopes of the Opposition. For various reasons, equality of opportunity has never been able to deliver equality of outcome – but it is the latter than the ordinary citizen thinks about whenever he/she hears about “equality”. Let us take education which, even in the British days, was held out as delivering “equality of opportunity” when it came to landing jobs in the civil service, then seen as the nirvana of employment.
While education is available to all Guyanese children, it is not a coincidence that the top one percent in every examination is dominated by students from wealthier homes. Those students can be sent to lessons, extra books can be purchased, Internet can be available etc. We can even look at something seemingly independent as health: wealthy people live longer than others primarily because they can afford better health care, even though the government facilities are available to all.
Thus, if we return to the vexed issue of government procurement, there is no guarantee that the contracts will not be awarded to the same set of contractors that have now acquired a great amount of experience, not to mention equipment. In the US, this problem was addressed in the 1960’s by an affirmative action programme that reserved 10 per cent of government contracts to constitutionally defined members of ‘minority groups”.
It had to be proven that the latter had been “systematically discriminated against” in the awards of contracts. One member of the Opposition has already mentioned this possibility under the regime of the Procurement Commission when it is constituted.
We would hope that these issues be thrashed out sooner rather than later.

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