Stuck on corruption

Jun 17, 2024 Editorial

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Kaieteur News – The old saying that people usually get the leaders they deserve rings true today as we reflect on the current state of affairs in this country. The late great, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi puts it this way: “If there is an idiot in power; it is because those who elected him are well represented.”

The past four years have provided a reality check in this regard for Guyanese.

Despite the promises made by the PPP/C during the 2020 elections campaign, not much has been done to change the minds of Guyanese that they are a better bunch than the APNUAFC. The same old malady that afflicted it during the 23 years it was in government prior to 2015 continues to fester. Corruption in high and low places cannot be separated from the PPP/C and the recent revelations by the United States Government confirm what everyone had been talking about for years.

It is instructive to note that only recently, General Secretary of the PPP/C and Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo was at a press conference sermonizing that the media and the opposition were distorting the party’s record and image and that they will have to fight back. At the said press conference he spoke about how the media would accuse it of being corrupt and this was not so and as such he was deploying “trolls” to help counter the narrative that the government was corrupt. It did not take too long for the US to hand down the sanctions so that the full scale of the corruption that has dogged the party to be revealed. Right in its bosom there is Mae Thomas a permanent secretary and also a member of the party’s Central Committee. Among other things the US Government accused her of collecting bribes from business people in exchange for contracts as well as selling gun permits and passports. These are very serious allegations. Guyanese are yet to see any serious attempt by the Guyana Police Force to probe the allegations that came out of the Vice News interview that implicated Jagdeo in corruption.

Sadly it seems as though the people of this nation will forever be exposed to blatant contempt by those in authority. If we are to go by the daily reports in the newspapers of the unpleasant doings of some of our politicians, the truth of that observation cannot be contradicted. Morality, it would appear, is insignificant. It used to be that the often complained moral lapse of politicians was in the realm of the acquisition of power. “Machiavelli” was the name invoked to describe the notion that one should be prepared to walk over one’s grandmother to achieve (and keep) office. Some justified this sort of behaviour by saying that the followers of “The Prince” were actually “amoral” and not “immoral”.

Recently, Guyana was a spectacle when it appeared before UN Human Rights Committee. One member of that body, Ms. Helene Tigroudja, noted: “The wealth derived from oil and gold exploitation and mining only benefits the richest in society leaving the poorest in extreme poverty.”  One does not have to look too far or too long, and there are self-evident truths in what Ms. Tigroudja spoke about so openly. Mining contracts awarded for the exploration of local goldfields are a secret. Why is that necessary, why is Vice President Jagdeo having such difficulty releasing them?  What could be involved between schemers in the Guyana Government and foreign gold companies, that those contracts must be concealed from citizens?  Given that so many of the details in offshore oil operations are hidden from Guyanese, what kind of deals have been worked out between the company and members of the PPPC Government who manage the ExxonMobil-Guyana relationship?  Billions in expenses have been buried far from the prying eyes of Guyanese.

What is the quid pro quo involved, who is collecting juicy paybacks? At US$1 = approximately GY$215, it doesn’t require much from ExxonMobil to make the weak and the willing in the PPPC Government to see things the company’s way. When there is nothing to hide, then there is no need for any degree of secrecy. When there is deep secrecy, the lessons of life have taught that there is corruption of some kind present. In times before, people in government showed that they did not have the principles required to say no when temptations and invitations to help themselves surfaced.  Now that there is oil, which means much more money, there is the simple logic that its fruits will prove to be irresistible.

The Guyana environment now stands as a proven field of corruption that is infested by the out of control. Sections of the private sector in Guyana are choking on the public works that are approved to provide what is needed to support the oil sector, or the mining sector in the interior.  Some contract awards make no sense, have no merit, and the people who are the recipients of them are known for their intimate relationships with those who make the decisions in the PPPC Government.  The really big decisions are only made by a small group of people, a close-knit cabal floating near the top.  The secrecy is so tight that even government agencies are thwarted when they put in for the records of awards involving specific contracts. Awards that have raised a hue and cry about their cleanliness and their credibility.  This is what has become a standing feature of contracts that amount to hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.  Some come from oil, and some come from gold and elsewhere.

 

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• corruption, Editorial, failed promises, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

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