The Social Responsibility of Corporations during these Elections

Feb 10, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR has become the North Star for corporations around the world and more so in North America. Nike, for example, is one of the trailblazers in CSR after being publicly criticised by the likes of Michael Moore and university students in the early nineties. This challenging time for Nike forced the company to change its approach on how it operates globally and reshaped itself as a true global citizen. They did that by improving working conditions for contract employees in Asia and improving good governance in other parts of the world. Today, Nike is the most profitable fashion retailer in the world and confirmed that their success is because of their CSR business model.
The energy sector too has strong CSR policies that governs their operations. British Petroleum (BP) has taken more direct steps to improve systems in many countries that includes human and labour rights. The ISO have also developed a guideline for how companies should conduct themselves in the social space by implementing ISO 26000. The aim is to provide a detailed guideline on the role of corporations as it relates to human rights, social justice and labour rights among other areas.
Considering the above, we should understand that clearly all companies operating in Guyana have a role to play by ensuring free and fair elections are conducted. It is the responsibility of these companies to remain objective and not influence any unethical behaviour of leaders in any capacity that adversely affects the integrity of our democratic process.
We have seen in many cases around the world where corporations have turned a blind eye on unethical behaviours or secretly support governments that oppressed its people for preferential gains. You just have to look at West Africa where history is littered with activists who have been assassinated in their fight to protect the rights of the people.
As Guyanese, we should expect nothing less than the full implementation of all companies’ CSR policies as they would apply it to their home countries. Our resources are making them richer and in return, we are asking that they do their part so that our fragile system is supported and strengthened to protect our democratic freedoms.
The plan to have oil realised today was because of the work done by Comrade Janet Jagan to have Exxon explore our waters. The PPP/C brought back a strong democracy to Guyana which paved the way for free and fair elections once again that resulted in APNU taking part and gaining power in 2015.
But we are now seeing that APNU has disregarded the constitution and forced themselves to remain in office way beyond their legal lifetime. These are all troubling signs for our democracy that we worked so hard on to rebuild.
I call on all corporations operating in our country to take heed of these things as they assess our social landscape.
In these elections, we are not only fighting to rebuild our country, but to restore a fair democratic process for all Guyanese.
Malcolm Watkins

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