The best thing to have happened to Guyana in a long while

Mar 04, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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In human psychology there is the traditional tale of paying the price for your stupidity when you refuse to learn. If people didn’t have to pay for the crimes they committed, anarchy, thousands of years ago, would have replaced civilization bringing an end to human society.
Since the beginning of community in those thousands of years ago, men and women, without philosophical training and intellectual finesse, decided upon a simple direction – if you commit wrong things, punishment must follow. Those wrong things didn’t need debate – stealing, killing –had to be punished.
As the Greek city-state developed, philosophical thinking on crime and punishment became pronounced. By the time of The Enlightenment, philosophers had set out in hundreds of books their thinking on crime and punishment. Two philosophers became very influential in the evolution of the deliberations – Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes.
Both argued that punishment is essential to keeping law and order, because humans are prone to maximize their own needs over others and therefore once this flaw is recognized there is an urgency to regulate selfishness. In the modern world today, the laws on crime and punishment are derived from these endless philosophical debates, beginning with Socratic and Platonic adumbrations in the Greek city-state.
In Guyana in 2014, this debate is in front of our very eyes with the anti-money laundering Bill. The AFC and APNU have refused to pass the Bill without their changes being included. In the case of the AFC, it offered a commonsensical demand which one would have thought would have reverberated throughout the land.
The AFC simply said, implement a body as stipulated by the constitution, where all tenders would go, so as to avoid corruption through governmental pressure. It is called the Procurement Commission. Had there been decent people in the banking, insurance and business sectors in Guyana then the anti-money laundering legislation would have been a reality months ago.
So there are whispers, cries, open fears that Guyana is going to suffer financial and economic devastation from international sanctions because we haven’t legislated money laundering laws as stipulated by the international community.
But wouldn’t such a disaster be a blessing in disguise? Shouldn’t patriotic democrats in Guyana welcome the sanctions because it will lead to the realization of decency in many people in Guyana who are downright unpatriotic, immoral, brutally selfish, and essentially flawed creatures?
Here is the thing. As soon as the combined opposition gets into power, either through the Thailand/Ukrainian/Arab Spring route or through elections, these very anti-nationalist bankers, insurance moguls and billionaires who have turned a blind eye to the worst atrocities in the exercise of power under the PPP in the CARICOM region will run and embrace the AFC and APNU leadership. And they will be welcomed and life goes on as normal. It is for this reason, I doubt in my life I will ever take out membership in a political party.
The only hope for the realization of decency in these bankers, insurance companies, and the Private Sector Commission is for the disaster to visit this land. Then when their billions begin to get thin, when the global financial community begins to squeeze them, when the society begins to fall apart, they may find just a moment to tell a dictatorial government that it is a minority regime; that it has to compromise and concede; that it has to recognize that Guyana changed historically after the 2011 elections.
The poorer classes must understand that unless these people’s pockets are hit and hit hard they are going to continue the politics of slavery, sycophancy and mendicancy, where in exchange for regime support for their profits, they will offer public relations support for dictatorship in Guyana.
The poorer classes must understand that even though they may not have read the philosophers of The Renaissance and The Enlightenment, the beneficiaries of dictatorship will continue their selfishness until punishment steps in. The working masses must understand that these bankers, insurance moguls and other billionaires aren’t going to internalize any lessons from the past, even though history’s tapestry is so rich with countless examples.
These rich folks couldn’t be bothered with the nastiness of five percent increase to public servants; a dying university; a police force without vehicles, forensic capabilities, breathalyzer machines; public schools without toilets, and the general ruin we see all around Guyana. They want the anti-money laundering Bill so they could avoid sanctions against Guyana that will disrupt the flow of their billions. The impending sanctions may be one of the greatest gifts to post-colonial Guyana. Let them come.

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