Corruption – Guyana a world beater, or deader than dead

Aug 11, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Budget billions have been national showstoppers since 2021, with new records annually. Even in the best of societies-advanced, watched, measured, censored-corruption is a problem. Here, building and improving and laying the groundwork for the next century is at fever pitch.

Infrastructure budgetary allocations have matched, often exceeded belief: close to if not over half the national budget. Faultfinders howl about political payback, crony cabals, corruption. The PPP Government denies and dismisses. Other than criteria neglected, procedurals not adhered to, in a few instances, it’s all much ado about nothing. Pump station, army wharf, school contract award developments notwithstanding. Corruption watchers holler tip of the iceberg.

The government counters, what iceberg? Where is it, what evidence? It takes a government that is supremely confident in its network of silence, its machinery of official and environmental aiders and abettors, to speak so boldly. Who has it right? Like inflation, is corruption a product of the Guyanese imagination, or a deadly and deadening condition? In life, inconvenient truths seep out, confirmations arrive in the worst outlines.

The tender board has transformed into a secret society, seemingly making up its own rules and practices, depending on the buyer, player, or the orchestrator. The procurement commission has bent over backwards to pretend that it has on pampers and doesn’t drip with syphilis. From evaluators to engineers, from Cabinet to contract pre-arrangements, and from awarders to checkers, there is a high-performance engine that purrs smoothly, performs flawlessly. Top government leaders impatiently wave their hands, grimace in disgust: what do the naysayers want, blood, bodies, burial societies?

Enter Uncle Sam: there is a corruption network in Guyana:

Bribery, government officials, bad business. In local patois: ‘baad fuh daaz’. Enter the Guyana Police Force: from crime stats to allegations of crimes committed on its inside, plus those on the hard streets. Who isn’t taking leave is taking a push up the ladder. Who isn’t held up elsewhere is held out here as paragons of policing. Guyana style, of course.

Enter the Guyanese media:

Fire station, pump station, who is stationed close to whom, and whose station in life makes corrupt things possible. The question is how one gets to such stations in life on a minister’s pay (‘laff’) and senior public servant package (more ‘laffs’). Few senior ones are also having a good laugh. I agree with Reader’s Digest that laughter is the best medicine. But we must remember physics and the zero-sum setup. One man’s laughter is another man being set up for a slaughter. Check those Guyanese who continually lose out. They know better than to protest publicly.

In its defence, the PPP Government said it is about respect for the rule of law and order. Whose definition of law and by whose order? Who are the lawgivers, law leaders, and lawbreakers, mostly rolled in one? The rule of law respected, or a clever respect for the law of money, other people’s money that is tampered with, tainted? Again, I don’t speak, I let the people speak.

Credible cries are raised by Guyanese all but locked out of the contract award arrangements, feastings. Whole families bid successfully: father, mother, current generation, extended generation. Some families are closely related to high political ones. Front men, backdoor operators, under-the-table performers.

The corruption circle widens, narrows. In Guyana, silence is golden. To stoop is to conquer. Maybe, better will come. PNC people bid occasionally; so, who is shafted? Discretion is more rewarding than valor. The Doberman commission has lockjaw, while the parliamentary committee is a political plaything. Why are those states necessary? I could believe that Guyana has the most principled people around the whole public works apparatus. They are so principled that they outshine the political, official, legal, professional, and commercial luminaries in places like Canada and Scandinavia. Keen-eyed Guyanese should spot that America is excluded.

Balance sheet last line: Guyana has the most incorruptible people. Or they have gotten away with plenty, by the confluences of political authorship, surrounding events, and walls of silence, with the worst corruption per capita, considering the circle of dirty hands, dirtier minds.

Some commonsense helps. Locally, unexplained wealth glitters overpoweringly. How do some ministers and public servants find time to do a halfway decent job, even to be on the job, given their real estate portfolios? How do some contractors find the time to oversee and deliver quality, given the magnitude of their tender winnings? Given the paucity of auditing skills, capacity, what is looked at, what is avoided, through refined scoping and schemes of work?

When things are too good to be true, I take the later. Then they are anything but. PPP leaders get defensive, find objecting citizens offensive. Why? The defensive political folks have their loaded closets of skeletons. Why again, and how big and how many? Corruption: hallucinations or imaginations? Or the real, raw conditions of a country that has no compass, no moorings, no care about footing, the appearance of things?

Before bowing out, I weigh what else the US has in its bag of surprises that are not surprises, given the local corruption culture, national religion, domestic political religion. Like Guyana’s food inflation index, the local corruption index, is a world beater, so low both are. World beater, or Guyanese deader than dead in each instance, that’s the question. A parting present is timely: if an apparition that is said to be a duck barks, howls, growls, lunges, even bites. Guyanese can educate me: waddling duck, or a frightening dog. PPP help is welcomed.

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

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• budgetary, GHK Lall, groundwork, Infrastructure, Showstoppers

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