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When watchdogs stumble, what protection is left?

Nov 18, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Too often for our liking, we are treated to news reports of senior officials hauled in by the authorities for questioning about some alleged white-collar crime. There is now a prevailing sequence of events, which looks like this. There is the announcement of interest by law enforcement, then a few days silence, then the person of interest turns up with an attorney, with bail following, while an investigation unfolds.
We are concerned about these instances that snare senior public servants. We make clear that this is general, and has no specific individual or situation in mind. We speak up for the Guyanese people, and show how they are betrayed by those put in charge of their affairs, especially those concerning money. When investigations result in senior public servants being charged and brought before the courts, then a sliver of the dirty story of white-collar criminals in Guyana becomes public. The little that comes to light causes a shudder, as to the way professional people are, and things are, in this country.
What is ventilated publicly relays to any thinking Guyanese that what is touched upon is a small flake off the iceberg, with so much more concealed and secret from years of wrongdoing and public service criminality. We learn of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars lost to crooked contractors. Yet not a single culprit is made to face the full force of the law. There is national suspicion, in some circles hard conclusions, that our politicians are serial thieves and pathological liars who will steal anything and do anything to cover up their actions. They are so slick currently, that they ensure they are insulated through layers of trusted handpicked cronies in crucial public service positions, all too willing to be the front men and front women, and execute whatever has to be done. Through this human resource arrangement, political leaders get to plead innocence and, better yet, no evidentiary trail leads to their doorstep. They have taken care of such irritations and inconveniences.
All in all, and whether this involves senior public service professionals, or ranking political leaders and their comrades, it is how at every tier the public trust is taken advantage of and eroded callously. When the senior ones are among those fingered, who is there to watch the juniors, and guard them from corrupting influences, and keep them in check against their own weaknesses, and the temptations that are so routine in Guyanese life?
Worse still, are those circumstances that occur where those placed in positions of oversight turn rogue, allegedly or actually? We reserve a special anger and contempt for those who are recruited for state agencies that are a vital component of a system of checks and balances, to detect fraud, to serve as a deterrent for it, and to set the right standard on how related obligations should be fulfilled at a personal and organisational level. For when our watchdogs fail us, by not being honest and untainted, by not doing their duty as they should, it becomes apparent that there is not much that we have left by way of a credible defense.
In fact, it could be said without fear of overstatement that the more we have of such watchdogs selling out while on the job, the more we are exposed to the white-collar corruptions and crimes that infest this country, across its length and breadth, and at every rung of the ladder. Who is there left to trust, is truly deserving of our trust shattered time and again?
Leaders betray our trust, and they laugh at citizens, while coming up with the stupidest, most brazen, excuses imaginable. Officers of the law, (to be interpreted at its widest expanse) let us down, and most of the time with many wrongdoings still undetected. Men who have committed crimes have become so arrogant that they taunt about producing the evidence, knowing very well that they have taken out that, or had others do that for them. When the professional sentinels fall, they take us down with them. The result is more wholesale thievery, more cunning camouflages, and with no one to arrest the tide.

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