H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – Business by the book and business by the hook

Oct 10, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – I have studied business, and felt that I knew something about it, enough to appreciate the reality of how it works. Nothing could be farther from the experiences encountered.  I lived with business at its highest level anywhere in the world, and that was for 20 years, so the thinking was that there was a pool of knowledge gained about what business is all about.  From the ins and outs, from the accumulations and absorptions from a handful of clean and a galaxy of crooked, practitioners of commerce, there came insights about real business in action, which were all filed away.

Then, I came back to Guyana, and there came the realization that I knew too little about the kind of business being practised here.  Here, everything is upside down, the reverse of all that learning in the classroom, and from the school of hard knocks, the toughest and most challenging environment that can be imagined.

So, here I am in PPP Guyana, really Bharrat Jagdeo Guyana: the roof caved in, the walls came tumbling down, and the floors ceased to exist, all at once.  My good brother (a thoroughly cleansed and righteously perfumed man, if there ever was one), Dr. Jagdeo has his own concepts about how business must work. Jagdeo’s business ideals are not in any textbooks, and if they did, the Harvard Business School would have objected.  Contrastingly, there is confidence that the folks at Patrice Lumumba University would be glowing with joy, rapturous in applause. For the record, Patrice Lumumba University is a desecration of a noble patriot’s memory, and not what an institution of learning should be.  That is, unless it is for a different kind of business and economics.  As examples, I offer the business of propaganda, destabilization, population suppression, media coercion, and state terrorism.  But I digress.

In Jagdeo’s world of business, demand and supply are turned on their head.  He demands and there is a regiment of suppliers, in the form of fawners, obsequious droolers, and those the Athenians called sycophants, which is now a label that speaks about, and points to, all that is topsy-turvy in this realm.  All that a supplier has to commit to doing is to rub Jagdeo’s head, and surrender to the Vice President’s demands.  Most of his demands are unique, almost all dark, and they take on an elasticity that stretches all the way to the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB).  There is elasticity of thinking about tenders practised at that heart stopping institution of business bidding, filtering, and awarding of favours that indicates that it is more about political returns than national or taxpayers’ returns.

When Guyanese thought they were getting check and balance, they got a gut check, and then were thrown a six for a nine, due to the unbalanced state in which business is practised and procured in Guyana.  The longer citizens commit to rubbing Dr. Jagdeo’s glistening tome, and sate his demands, the more the supply of cons and sleights of hand are guaranteed to happen.

In a small nutshell, there are no concerns about currency stoppages, nor is there any interest in division of labour calling for specialized talents and skills.  In the economics texts (some on paper, some electronic), this is business Bharrat Jagdeo style.  Just get the business done. Jagdeo’s business priority is not about citizen satisfaction, but what drives political CEO(s), and satisfies their hungers for richer and richer returns.  NPTAB has studied the terrain, its safest role, and figured out that best practices terminate at going along to get along.  It has been given the costume in different places and different times, of having the best people for the job, who just happen to be the cleverest, and the cutest.  For confirmation, I invite my fellow citizens to review the reviewers, and see what they get.  Everything points in one direction, and all minds focused: name the winning bidder and the deed is done.  It is the easiest job in Guyana: supply what is in demand, and there is consumer (leadership) happiness.

Guyanese in places of special importance know how government business really works here, know what is demanded of them.  They must pass their hand over Jagdeo’s head, smooth his agitated spirits, tell him what he craves to hear, listen to any emptiness that comes out of him, and ask him syrupy questions what he had cunningly arranged before.  What could be simpler than that, especially when there is a pot o’ gold waiting from NPTAB?  Regarding the Public Procurement Commission, there are no pushbacks, given that its key operating principle distils to this: what Bharrat Jagdeo wants (demands) Bharrat Jagdeo must get (the fullest supply).  All analyses flatten to this rather curvaceous line; a regular beauty it is.  This is what the PPC’s mission statement amounts to, the sum of its values.

So, where does this government business culture leave rank outsiders like me, who will not play along for pay?  Well, Dr. Jagdeo can demand, Jagdeo can denounce, but I will be damned if there is any supply to Jagdeo of the fawning from this little corner over here.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• Bharrat Jagdeo, business, GHK Lall, Guyana, H@rd Truths

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