The Private Sector – a study in contradictions

Apr 17, 2020 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

The private sector is increasingly a more outspoken and formidable presence in the public domain. Local politics monopolizes all attention and its every vision and word. As I examine its sprawling presence, I question not merely its motives, I weigh-in also as to its fitness to stand as advocate for any clean continuing, for any new beginning.
As I read and absorb its positions, I discern a clash of conflicts, that it is a study in continuing contradictions. The same people, large segments from the sector, have a long sordid history. It was of interminable agitations, the endless subterfuges employed to resist, evade, and breach successfully regulations; of how they were a law onto themselves in concealment and deceptions. These are the people, who now step forward for righteous governance when their previously self-denouncing record is of anything approaching such.
Voices now raised in broadening holiness about democracy and transparency have a history going back to a massacre when abundant self-help occurred; but today they speak of justice and truth. There is an even more piercing history from the early years of this century, when swaths of the private sector gave assets and helping hands in the recruitment of mercenaries. Crime fighters they were called. Now men who were part of the raging disorders and lawlessness lecture local and foreign communities about the undemocratic and injustice. How about removing the masks first? More than a few of them are now on the radars of concerned foreign intelligence units, of the same foreign governments appealed to for intervention via the sword of sanctions.
With that sweeping sword in mind, they talk today in cautionary notes of the possible catastrophic consequences of sanctions. My first questions are: Why call for them in the first place? Why incite the whipped up outsiders to burn down the family hearth, and then turn around and lead the chorus of wailings at the wake, lamenting the loss of it all? I go further: why waste the thought, time, and effort to press for penalties that would make wretched the life of the ordinary man, when all that matters are profits, or is it more about the “decay of businesses”- a reality not to be dismissed at all – that takes center stage?
Since that specter rears its Gorgon-like face, there is hoping for local listening from the obstinate power apparatus. I suggest that such should have been the first commitment, the earliest and unending expressions of dedication to finding a workable solution, to suppress the flagrant partisan leanings for the bigger betterment. So, why the cry now when the fallouts should have been the primary consideration? Why not and wither the priority of expending energy, capital, goodwill, conscience (the last two in severe short supply), to carve out a way towards some temporary half-cure that offers a glimmer of a more lasting wholesome settlement?
Having been intertwined tightly with it, I respect the role of businesses, and appreciate that they exist in virtual perpetuity, while I remind that the starving man doesn’t. I remind, also, that businesses bounce back inevitably, no matter how long the downturn cycle, while families have no such luxury and, at best, are mostly condemned to a lifetime of poverty in the aftermath of any recovery.
I submit that local businesspeople have earned a sterling reputation, a palpably dubious one, of swaying with the political times, of tangoing with tyrants, and dancing with democratic abusers. Now having led the charge in calling for swinging this society in the wind to punish a stubborn government by external forces, it doubles back and doubles down to raise alarms from the inside about the dire straits into which those could lead. Be careful what is wished for, it sometimes comes to pass.
The long castigated Cheddi Jagan was laid low because he went against vested Guyanese business interests that conspired with overseas ideological warriors to run him into the ground and then excommunicated him into deep darkness. Today, the capitalist leaning David Granger stares at the same fate from the same hands that were raised against the avowed Marxist of old now gone. History does repeat itself, and like a chameleon Guyanese are being told that it is not a spotted creature, but a giraffe of the highest ideals allowed by its elongated neck, of high-minded thinking in the altruistic and patriotic. That would be the day that the devil made! What a bunch of deceivers the ranks of the private sector have metamorphosed into? Cloven hooves are revealed.
I take no issue with the partisan. Come out of the cellophane closet and say it publicly; have the balls to take a stand. I did. Not a single voice was raised, not a single issue that troubled was tabled, when the now opposition was at the helm. The going was too good, democratic norms were the order of the day. The media can attest.
What I take serious issue with is the private sector seeking many bites out of the apple by pretending at concerns for country and citizens. With friends like these, who needs enemies!

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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