The exodus of skills will continue

Apr 24, 2018 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Guyana cannot develop without professional skills. Guyana’s underdevelopment has been about its failure to retain skilled personnel.
Professionals have been running out of Guyana, not because they cannot enjoy a good life, but because they do not wish themselves and their family to become victims of the country’s vicious political culture.
Professionals are now the latest victims of the political sideshow which is put on by the APNU+AFC government and the PPPC. The PNCR, the main party of APNU, holds its congress in August of this year. The party has decided to play to the gallery by attempting to satisfy the bloodthirsty ambitions of those within its ranks who want to see persons who served under the former regime jailed.
The PNCR came to power on the basis of claims that officials of the former administration had run a ‘kleptocracy’. Three years into its rule, it has failed to find the billions in claims were stolen or to point to where these monies may be located. It is under pressure to jail persons, and it is quite capable of perverting the entire system of justice to do so.
With Congress ahead, it needs to create some waves, and it is targeting professionals who served under the PPPC. It has done so by digging up an archaic offence called “misconduct by a public official in common law”. This is a very ambiguous offence, one that is considered outdated and used mainly for head-chopping purposes.
In turn, the PPPC has countered by filing charges against two Ministers for the same offence. The PPPC is however not engaged in a tit-for-tat. It is testing the legal validity of this offence and demonstrating the double standards being practiced by the government and the justice administration system.
The PPPC has nothing to lose. The PPPC wants the public trials of professionals. It will milk such a spectacle for all the political capital it can get.
The PNCR is only making the PPPC become more popular by these charges which it has filed. The supporters of the PPPC will huddle around the party in light of what they see as a vicious attempt to persecute persons who worked for the PPPC.
But professionals who work under the present APNU+AFC administration also have to be worried. Because should there be a change of government, they will worry as to what will be their fate. They do not know whether the same offences will be used against them.
The entire political environment has become poisoned by the excavation of this old, outmoded offence of ‘misconduct by public official under the common law’, a charge which has never been known to have been utilized in Guyana before.
Guyana cannot develop without a cadre of skilled professionals. But why would any professional, worth his salt, want to come to work in Guyana under such a poisoned political environment.
The government has promised that more professionals who worked under the PPPC will be charged. In fact, it did charge a former permanent secretary with an offence after it is said that he had substantial assets, but the charge seems to have dropped off the radar. Nothing has been heard of it for some time. Many people are therefore going to believe that the only reason this person was charged was to remove him from the position he held.
How are professions going to function when they know that there is the possibility that someone will claim that they did this or they failed to do that, and therefore can be charged with an offence which can see them being jailed for life.
The charges are therefore an assault on professionals who work with government. It will force them to take the next plane out, because no one wants to be part of a toxic political environment.
The charges have come just as it is being rumoured that the PPPC has been courting professionals who were once supporters of APNU and the AFC. Many of these young professionals have met with PPPC leaders and are contemplating being part of a solution to the country’s problems without having to join the PPPC.
The charges will now lead to an exodus of skilled Guyanese. It will discourage qualified persons from wanting to work in Guyana.
So what is going to happen is that Guyana will end up with the “chicken feed” that Exxon Mobil will provide, only to find that people will not want to come here to work.
Difficult times lie ahead once the political pollution does not abate. Unfortunately, there is no prospect in sight for an improvement in the political environment which can help create a climate in which professionals can feel comfortable.
Guyanese who cannot migrate had better begin to bind their bellies and prepare for hard times! The PNCR has returned to its destructive mode.

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