Corrupt elites

Feb 14, 2025 Editorial, News

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Editorial…

Kaieteur News- Transparency International (TI) said it, Guyanese already knew it.  Guyana is captive to corrupt business and political elites.  Citizens are held to ransom by a cabal of corrupters in the business and political sectors.  Citizens that have eyes see it, so overwhelming corruption is under the PPPC Government.  Those who have ears and a mind are able to observe almost effortlessly the culture of corruption that has seized control of this country.

From command of its rich resources to unlimited political influence, the elites have sabotaged the promise that belongs to all Guyanese.  With the help of a colluding elite in the PPPC Government, the business elite control how Guyana’s riches are parceled out, and with scant interest about where the commonfolk are left.  There is extraordinary prosperity for the corrupt elites, there is grinding poverty for the poor.  In a country now among the richest, almost half of the people know hunger daily.  The political elite in the PPPC Government collaborate with the business elite to rape and rob this country, with a common ingredient surging through both elite groups: unbelievable levels of corruption.

The political and business elites own corruption and have it under lock and key.  The political elite has the power of control over the people’s purse and the decisions related to its uses.  The business elite has the money and reach to influence how the political decisions are made and who benefits, which means its members.  The decisions that feed Guyana’s corruption cover from high-price public works projects, to regulations reduced or eliminated or selectively enforced to sweetheart deals and bargains (special concessions).  When tendering and procuring are a maze of contradictions and violations, with covering following, that is corruption.  When the specifics of oil money withdrawals cannot be disclosed, and citizens are targeted and vilified because they press for transparency that is corruption involving billions of US dollars.  When the US$2B Wales gas-to-energy project is blanketed in secrecy, then that is an indication that corruption is at work, especially now that the original cost of the project has more than doubled.  When there is a huge land scandal that involves close friends of the PPPC government that is the kind of corruption that would drop any country in the rankings, and dump it around midpoint of corruptions measurements.

Guyana is a country with a government that says it is clean, yet it hides troves of vital information from citizens.  The PPPC Government insists that it is accountable, but when citizens ask for details on huge economic projects (Wales gas-to-energy, ExxonMobil expenses, oversight of the oil consortium offshore operations, and more), they are slammed and mocked for being against progress.  TI identified what Guyanese note from government postures and speeches. how dissenting citizens, activists, and journalists have been abused and degraded.  Only a corrupt government that has much to hide operates in that manner.  The TI report recorded that Guyana now ranks at 92 in a population of 180 countries in its much-followed Corruption Index, having slipped by one point, from 40 to 39, in TI’s latest score.  This means that Guyana is very close to the bottom half of countries where corruption is concerned.  Despite President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo furiously attacking Guyanese who raise the corruption issue, now at cancerous levels, citizens see and know the massive corruptions going on right under their noses.  The outside world, like the TI group, also recognizes the corruption beass that devours this country in its every undertaking.  Corruption is too much to ignore, or to sweep under the carpet.  It is of such an enormous magnitude that it cannot be made to disappear because the PPPC government, wishes for it to be so.  The more that government leaders rage, protest, and deny, the more they expose the extent of the corruption that has now infused almost every area of local life.

The political and business elites are those who have accumulated massive amounts of wealth on the backs of the have nots.  Ministers and senior public servants cannot account for, and seek refuge in silence over, their unexplained wealth.  Corruption is a kingdom by itself in Guyana, and political and business elites are the kings.

(Corrupt elites)

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• culture of corruption, Editorial, Guyana’s riches, PPPC Government, Transparency Internationa

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