Not surprising; corruption on the rise

Mar 03, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – In this country, corruption is culture and religion. In Guyana, corruption is a chronic combination of toothache, headache, heartache, and backache. It is an ache in the gut that neither leaves us alone nor lets us rest. Transparency International informed Guyanese of the numbers that dipped. There is caption and graph and numbers that relay the putrid national nasty story with money and governance that is Guyanese (“Corruption in Guyana on the rise again – as country score dips in latest Transparency International ranking” KN January 26). It is our hope at this publication that the rise in corruption is not a promise of things to come.
We risk being accused as totally unrealistic with that hope of ours. For there are so many more billions being put in play, and which means that the boys and girls who oversee these visions and works, usually have plans of their own on how to siphon off what does not belong to them but to the strapped Guyanese taxpayers always left with the huge bills for what was done, nobody knows, or simply falls apart before too long. Corruption is the dagger in our kidneys with one financial treachery after another from devious and characterless politicians and the crew of public servants they select to manage the dirty, defrauding work for them. It is the poison in our bloodstream that we cannot be rid of; the pain in the behind that leave us wriggling and wringing our hands in continuing dismay.
The APNU+AFC Coalition administration did try and registered some improved scores during its short stay in the sanctuary of power. Nonetheless, as we have read and learned from recent reports from the Audit Office, there are no supporting documents to facilitate tracing of taxpayers’ funds spent on multimillion dollar public works projects. Over a half billion in something as helpful as hampers cannot be tracked because men and women near to that kind of money worked diligently to hide their handiwork, and if there is no paper trail, then that is the end of any line of official inquiry and scrutiny. If our governments and their handpicked helpers, usually those from deep inside the bowels of the political parties, can be so low and dastardly, as to engage in the corrupt when citizens are struggling from the severe financial afflictions of a vicious viral pandemic, then there is no limit to their depravities. It is merely one glaring instance of the self-enrichment of crooked governing politicians and the people with whom they surround themselves and protect. There is no stopping them, which has been the reality of Guyana’s corruption story, year after year, and with one government, then another seeking to outdo the other regarding which one and their people can plunder and steal more for themselves.
Now that the PPP/C is back in the halls of power, it is not surprising that “corruption in Guyana is on the rise again.” PPP/C Governments have written the book on how to engage in corruption and get away with such assaults on the nation’s coffers, and the nation’s people. The history is there, and though long, it is already repeating itself, and this is only after just over a year. For 23 years successive PPP/C administrations have shaken the money tree, milked dry the national cow, and that was before oil. Now with the fabulous riches of oil a proven reality, there is this frenzy of borrowing and spending, which serves one purpose primarily. It is that under official cover and the sanctimonious words and promises of criminal leaders and their lesser stewards, there is preparation for rich corruption actions guaranteed to make them billionaires many times over, and in currency other than Guyana’s.
This is the staggering breadth of what is in motion, and will take shape, as will be seen. Some dogs just cannot stop sucking eggs, or it is like setting loose an alcoholic in a full distillery. The oil fund is targeted, and coupled with additional borrowings, the men in charge and those who do their bidding already don’t know what to do with themselves. From today, we make this prediction of corruption rising still more from Transparency International.

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