Bribes: giving and taking, minimising

Nov 18, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Guyanese are put on notice.  Offering a bribe to a cop is a crime.  The taking of a bribe by a cop, or the demanding of one, is a crime.  Guyanese also heard about “zero tolerance” and being subject to the “full force of the law.”

Taking all of this in hand, corruption in the Guyana Police Force (GPF) is under severe assault, should experience some level of minimising following, should everything fall into place.  The stern language is present, and so are the warming public postures.  How can the GPF, the Guyanese people, and Guyana itself go wrong?

String along a police worker with 10%, and he or she is on the hunt for 10 bribe situations before the day is done.  It could be on the road, or behind the desk in the station, the dreaded station; or higher up.  A report indicated that the airport is not exempt from such overtures, actions.  To my fellow citizens, this is said to each one: do not make a fool of oneself, and don’t let others make a fool of sensible people.  Bribegiving, bribetaking, and bribe arranging are not the exclusive operations center of constables, corporals, and sergeants.

Thus, I caution citizens to take with a heavy dose of castor oil all this inspiring language about who is against corruption, and who has run out of patience with corruption, and who has no tolerance for corruption anymore.  Be realistic is my counsel.  Swallow sparingly.  In swallowing hard, ordinary Guyanese should be on the alert for hidden bones that can tear their tonsils apart.  To say differently, seeing is believing; and when there is living with a radically different type of GPF culture, a clean and professional one, only then there will be grounds for applauding and supporting.  I would.

Having taken the liberty of advising fellow sojourners on the road, and those law-abiding Guyanese who make themselves small when they spot a traffic rank, or a police car, or police shoulder boards overrun with stars, I now extend the same courtesy of giving advice to the GPF, from the top to the bottom.  Broadcast on the radio, TV, social media, online media, and paper media, when the attending rank should write a ticket, and when the circumstance that stands before must be deal with at the stationhouse.  So, when that not-so-nuanced hint, which is a threat disguised as unavoidable procedural next steps, surfaces about ‘drive to the station,’ Guyanese know what the rank can do and should do, and what games he or she is playing.  Requests for documents have their moments.

But they are also part of the tension building street dance involving those in uniform and those sitting behind the wheel, or handlebars.  The objective is to shakedown the naïve, the too cooperative, the erring, and those who know all too well how the local police culture works.  It is a two-way street, with citizens making their own contributions to the corruption cancer.  An informed citizen is a healthy citizen; one who knows rights, the protocols, and when escalations are necessary.  Give Guyanese what they need, so that they project sober, mature, and lawful citizenship.  Educate them.  Strengthen them.

Help them to resist invitations to bribing.  Help members of the GPF to be aware that citizens have been informed, so they [police] had better follow the rules, standards.  I read that the idea is saying no to corruption.  I think this could go far in reducing the anxieties of citizens, stiffening the backs of police ranks and officers, and being done with this unhealthy fear of the stationhouse and courthouse.  Of course, there’s the tradeoff: a $5,000 bribe is a fair exchange for a day lost and a larger fine from some magistrate.

Second, there were some sounds that GPF street monitors would have ticket books to write up violators of traffic regs.  If that isn’t the reality right now, then it must be universal soonest.  When there are grounds to issue a ticket, just do it.  Citizens would know what is ticket-able, and what isn’t.  Everyone could move on.  I wrote ‘could’ because some habits are hard to discard.  The easy, simple, no-frills, no penalty way is to extend a gift, and all concerned live to carry on, until the next encounter.  Bigger visions come from such small unscrupulous beginnings.

Last, there was an interval when the contact numbers of all GPF commanders were published.  I would urge the Top Cop and new Minister of Home Affairs to consider sharing those numbers with the public as part of an ongoing practice.  Let it be an open book about who, at what level, is ready to transform pretty words about bribes and corruption into deeds that denounce both.

(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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• Bribegiving, bribetaking, Guyanese people, Offering a bribe, rranging, zero tolerance

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