The long, evil political shadow blighting this nation

Dec 21, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – On December 9, the world observed International Anti-corruption Day. Many made fine speeches, while similar glowing commentaries came from high and low, and the tiny and influential in this society. We didn’t editorialise before, but now we will. For the next several days, corruption will be raised in this space, and focus on areas that suffocate Guyana. The spotlight will shine on the shadows of leadership corruptions that blight almost all citizens.
We at this publication have been relentless, and we promise Guyana that we will strive mightily to present truth and facts, as well as clear and reasoned thinking, mainly commonsense thinking that is the best logic to be found on this national blight that is corruption in Guyana.
We begin with a series of simple questions, which we will address frontally, and let fellow citizens judge. First, should corruption be a priority national concern? Second, is responsibility for corruption mainly the handiwork of Guyana’s political leaders and their teams of ministers and selected public servants? Third, is corruption, as experienced, from the PPP/C alone, or the PNC/R alone? Fourth, if it is chronically present in the actions of both major parties representing Guyana’s major ethnicities, which of the two groups has more harmed this nation and its peoples? And fifth, given the damage done, what are our obligations as citizens?
There is no question regarding whether there is or isn’t corruption in this country. That is a given, at every layer in this society, from the small man to those at the heights, from the simple to the sophisticated, from those ‘in the know’ to those who know almost nothing. Second, and confirming this situation, political and ministerial leaders and their spokespeople, and their counterparts in the political opposition of the day, relish hurling accusations at each other about their corrupt practices and costs. In Guyana, citizens have a good laugh, and shake their heads at different political kettles calling other pots black. This alone conveys how chronic corruption is in Guyana, which even loyal supporters reluctantly admit of their own. It is not one, but both.
Our third question involves tracing corruption to its source, which most Guyanese say rests with government. Governments control the purse strings for huge projects, running into the billions. Infrastructure, social uplift, and other programmes requiring enormous sums of money are decided upon and overseen by politicians, through the delivery by their chosen people. Simply put, Guyanese have not received value for money spent: failed projects that cost us more than they should, that takes inexplicably longer, that then collapse or fail when handed over, that return less than they should. We let our fellow Guyanese pick any project from the many failures – roads, airport, relief, oil.
The fourth question raised is answered by Guyana’s two political behemoths themselves. The PPP/C and PNC/R have pounded each other as to how terribly corrupt the other is, and each have their own laundry bag of costly, dirty linen (projects) as proofs. Listen to both parties, and it is obvious that what we have are clearly criminal cabals, who condemn themselves by their own mouths. The PNC had its time for 28 devastating years, and trails of thievery and criminality deserving penal life sentences. As the PPP/C closes in on its own 28 years, the norm now is not to speak of projects costing hundreds of millions of Guyana dollars, but in American ones, which multiplies the loot to plunder 200 times over. Like the PNC/R did, now the PPP/C, presides over billions in wealth, and give them away, squirrel away, or siphon away, in corrupt arrangements. Oil brought this out in the starkest terms.
We have been talking and writing almost daily about those corruptions and failures, now undeniable, because they are so monstrous. They have been costly and disastrous in the past and today, and dooms us to a tragic future, these leadership corruptions are now a national epidemic. Guyanese learn or know or understand all this daily, with little doubt left. We can let them rob us and our children or give them the hardest kick in the backside? We must distance from them, denounce them, dismiss them, discard them forthwith.

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