Changing the face of government

Sep 09, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The plan of the new administration to change the face of ministries must not be taken literally. It must not be seen or interpreted as a recipe to purge the public service and public sector of persons perceived to be supportive or supporters of the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC).
Prior to last year, there had not been a change in government for twenty-three years. Prior to that, there was no change for twenty-eight years. This fact does not justify the high level of suspicion and vengefulness which has been demonstrated since the new government came to power.
You cannot simply decide on a policy of changing the face of government without changing the nature of government. You cannot set about a policy to ensure a complete overhaul in personnel in most government ministries and not reinvent government to become a servant rather than an overlord of the people.
The new administration has now settled. The more settled it is, the more brutal it has become. It does not seem to understand that not only is it tarnishing its own image, but it is also in the process, defeating the very notion of social cohesion which it is championing.
How can there be social cohesion when changing the face of government involves changing personnel, some of whom have been removed arbitrarily from their jobs? How can you convince the people of New York, who under one year ago were protesting against the government based on their perceptions of what was behind the decision to send home persons who worked in the New York Consulate?
The long absence of power has allowed too much ill-feelings and suspicion to be bred about the staff within the public service and public sector. Most of these persons are not political at all, and are merely doing their jobs, but because they were appointed under the previous administration, they have been deemed to be political.
Guyana has a high unemployment rate. A great many supporters of the government are looking for jobs. Now that the government has changed, they feel that they should be replacing those who are working within the public service and public sector. Many of them have little or no experience, but they want to get top jobs and work above their own abilities.
There are many overseas persons who want to come back to enjoy the fat salaries, because many of them are retired or unable to find jobs where they reside overseas. The government is therefore under a great deal of pressure, politically, to cleanse the government of persons appointed under the PPPC administration, and to employ their own supporters.
There are a lot of people lining up for jobs. But there are too many pretenders out there, too many pretenders also within the government; persons who pretend to know what they are about, who are filled with bluster but short on brains.
Guyana has always had a shortage of skilled personnel. There are many persons who are being employed by the new government who are being paid to do nothing, because someone else is doing the work and they are posing and taking all the credit for someone else’s work. They are not doing the work, because they cannot do the work. Some of them cannot write a proper letter. Many of them are poseurs.
Changing the face of government should not be about changing personnel alone. It should be about changing the way government operates. It is about putting government to serve people and to solve problems.
Unfortunately, this cannot be achieved by replacing one set of staff with another. It cannot be done by changing the face of government. The nature of government has to change.
The acting Police Commissioner is trying his best to bring about change in the police force. He is not going to succeed unless he changes the way the police operate. It is no use asking the police to stop harassing motorists. They will continue to do so because they have the power of lawful use of coercion, and because certain practices have become germane to how the force operates.
Changing the face of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) has to mean changing the nature of the organization. This should begin by reducing fines, since high fines, rather than becoming a deterrent to criminal activities, serve as an incentive for bribery.
The second thing to do is to privatize certain operations of the police such as the issuance of passports and fitness for motor vehicles. If the GPF privatizes these operations, as a start, they will be on their way to reinventing their organizations. This is where the change must begin.
The nature of government has to change. It cannot be a source of enrichment for political acolytes of the government or “jobs for the boys”.
The best government is no government. But since there has to be a government, then the next best form of government has to be small government.

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