The woes of the Integrity Commission

May 15, 2019 Editorial

The list is out there in the public domain. At seventy-plus strong, it does not give any comfort from the last such exposure exercise. The gentle reminders style so prevalent in this country is not gaining much traction, or individual mileage as to bringing in their papers.

If the US Consulate had such documentation and fulfillment issues, this nation would have a population of over two million today. Everybody is staying put. And that is precisely what has been manifested in the senior bureaucratic ranks in some areas of the public sector: people staying put.

The word and attitude appear to be: Stop bothering. Cease and desist from embarrassing folks wishing to be left alone.This is tantamount to premeditated harassment, intimidation of the first order and capricious in nature. Do something about it because nothing doing on this side. To the law-abiding: shades of the outlaw don’t apply to me.

Besides thumbing nose, raising that finger and shaking head in refusal, senior people are looking for sturdy pillars from behind which to find the bodily relief of a little time, a little space.

Cumulatively, this amounts to more than that: it furnishes evidence of stellar disregard not only for the Integrity Commission, but for the call towards clean behaviour leading to cleaner stewardship and governance.

What could be the problem on something that is so sensitive as to have implications? As to actual noncompliance and now the appearance and word (repeated) of failing to deliver? And why still after it is made public?

It could be those plentiful Guyanese instances of men and women having so much that it takes an inordinate-and underappreciated-length of time to gather documents (and wits), to arrange memory (and caution) as to what is owned and involved, and which must now be put down on paper.

The rest who have less do not have that limb on which to climb. It will not hold long. Even as that limb bows and prepares to crack, it creaks loudly and suspiciously. Judgment without the rush.

Three-quarters of a century of bureaucratic seniors, the officially embarrassingly tardy, the state appointed stonewalling is a hard number to fathom, a terrible number to pardon and cut some slack, any slack.

They may be busy and overwhelmed with the demands of a demanding state; so is everybody else, all those who ponied up. Neatly. Early. Does not look good. Smells worse.

There are some very sensitive absentees in that list of not quite foes of the state, but not friendly to its strategies and plans either. No subtitles should be needed as to the crucial nature of incorruptibility and the appearance of that elusive standard in some of the positions and places identified; too glaring to be left alone for much longer.

It is not unreasonable to wonder as to the value of any submissions at this belated stage of the game. Except that this was never meant to be a game, but all earnestness. Tell that to defaulters. Again.

The hypercritical public would be justified in assigning the worse possible motives to these examples of studiously ignoring, clinically distancing. Not delivering.

There should be no argument from the ranks of the noncompliant when all manner of conjectures arises as to calculated visions, as assisted by calculated actions, and characterized by calculated rejections.

Silent protest; foot dragging; all of this subject the work and office of the Integrity Commission to contempt and, the objectives of those who made it happen.

After so much lost time, disclosure may not mean much. Diluted and drained of possibly incriminating pus. There it is: compliance. What next? Ball and chain? More public flogging? Some may posit that it is draconian. It isn’t. It is pale and mild and timid.