Our dysfunctional Guyana

Apr 13, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The institutions which the British left were flawed but they were functional. These institutions upheld and protected certain class interests but they also ensured order and control.
The law – an institution – protected private property– and it ensured that the right to private property was upheld. In that regard, the law discriminated in favour of the upper class. But it also provided protection to the man or woman from the lower classes who one day was able to own a property. The system was flawed but worked.
The institutions of the State are not working today because our institutions have been perverted. They have been redirected to advance personal and political interests. They are part of the ‘hustle’.
Instead of allowing the system to work, there developed something called ‘lines.’ Once you had the right connections, you could get things done and enjoy favours. This situation also existed in the colonial institutions but then it was seen as aberrations rather than the norm.
The post-rulers have institutionalized these aberrations. They have turned the exceptions into the rule. Instead of the system becoming fairer, instead of its wrongs being corrected, the system has become more unfair and unjust.
Years ago, St. Margaret’s Primary School was considered – whether real or perceived – as being one of the better primary schools. A great many parents wanted their children to attend that school because they felt that it allowed their children to do well and gain entry into one of the top secondary schools.
However, with free education, it meant that there were more children whose parents wanted them in that school than the school could accommodate. At the time, the then socialist government, in keeping with their idea of equality, decided that children must attend the school in their catchment area. Thus if you lived in an area, you were supposed to attend the school in that area.
Do you know how many children who did not live anywhere near Cummingsburg ended up attending St. Margaret’s Primary School? The number of persons who claimed that they were living in Quamina Street, which is in the catchment area, exceeded the number of homes in that street. But who checked? People used the system to their advantage.
And this disadvantaged many eligible students from the same or nearby areas who could not gain entry. When asked why this unfairness was being allowed, it was explained that apart from the catchment criteria there was also a system of random placements. This is an example of how the system was perverted and made dysfunctional.
Membership had its privileges. There were persons who did not meet the qualifications for entry into the University of Guyana. But they pulled ‘strings’ and gained backdoor entry.
Have you ever seen any top businessmen in Guyana in the line at the Passport Office? Have you ever asked how it is they managed to get their passports without joining the daily queue at the Passport Office?
Do you know how many persons who owned property got Government house lots even though there is a rule which states that once you or your spouse is a property owner you are not eligible? Who was checking? People simply declared that they were not property owners, when in fact they were.
Nobody is checking on that today. In fact, there were instances in which some persons got more than one house lot. An engineer, now deceased, got house lots for every one of his three adult children, at the same time.
The perversion of institutions is not only a Guyanese problem. It is also a problem in other parts of the English-speaking Caribbean. There was a law student who was thrown out of the University of the West Indies for misconduct. That student somehow managed, years after, to reenter the system and today holds a senior appointment.
The system left by the British was flawed but there was an element of fairness in the system. In the post-colonial period, the system has been perverted to serve the interests of political and bureaucratic elite and has become corrupted rather than fairer.
Rules against conflict of interests in government – an institutional standards of good governance – have therefore become alien and impractical. One man remarked yesterday, “Conflict of interest? What is that? Dem things don’t wuk in Guyana.

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