This nasty habit

Jul 07, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – There is an old habit in Guyana that refuses to die. It is a habit born not of evidence but of envy, not of investigation but of insinuation.

It surfaces whenever someone builds a handsome home, acquires farmland, opens a new business, or appears to prosper beyond what the village accountant believes possible. The verdict comes swiftly and confidently: the money must be dirty. Drugs. Corruption. Theft. Something illicit. There is seldom any proof. There is always certainty.

One would have imagined that this crude reflex would have disappeared as Guyana modernised. Instead, it has merely found new political custodians.

The leader of the opposition has now embraced this familiar practice with remarkable enthusiasm. Rather than present evidence of wrongdoing, he presents photographs of assets. Rather than produce documents demonstrating corruption, he offers arithmetic. Rather than investigate financial records, he invites the public to draw conclusions from appearances.

This is not accountability. It is speculation masquerading as scrutiny.

His latest target is none other than the President of Guyana. Displaying images of the president’s farm, the opposition leader argues that the president’s lawful earnings could never account for the scale of the investment. He even ventured into estimating the revenues from the poultry operation, calculating that the chicken houses generate some $80 million every six weeks.

One is left wondering whether he appreciates the implications of his own calculations. If those figures are anywhere near accurate, they do not merely suggest a profitable enterprise; they describe precisely the kind of business that financial institutions would be eager to finance since the entire capital investment for the farm can be repaid easily within a mere 3 years. .

Any competent banker examines one fundamental question before extending credit: can the borrower repay? A commercial operation capable of generating that level of revenue presents precisely the sort of cash flow upon which loans are routinely structured.

This is how modern economies function. The remarkable structures rising across Guyana are not built from salaries alone. They are financed, in overwhelming measure, by banks. The construction boom visible throughout the country is not principally the product of accumulated monthly earnings. It is driven by mortgages, commercial loans, and lines of credit facilities extended by institutions whose business depends upon evaluating risk and future income.

Indeed, many of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs would readily acknowledge that they could never have reached their present position relying solely upon retained earnings. They borrowed. They leveraged assets. They refinanced. They expanded through access to capital.

There is therefore something strangely antiquated about assuming that every significant asset must have been purchased outright from one’s personal income. Such reasoning belongs to a time when banking was inaccessible to ordinary citizens and commercial credit was the privilege of a narrow elite.

Today’s economy operates differently. That reality appears to have escaped the opposition leader.

None of this is to suggest that corruption does not exist. It does. Every government, regardless of political complexion, must remain subject to scrutiny. Public officials should be transparent. Questions concerning conflicts of interest, procurement, asset declarations and unexplained wealth deserve careful examination wherever legitimate grounds exist.

But suspicion is not evidence. And accusations should not replace investigation.

To allege corruption simply because someone possesses substantial assets is to establish a dangerous principle. Today it is a government minister. Tomorrow it is a businessman. The following day it is a farmer who has expanded his acreage, or a contractor who has built a new home, or a young professional whose mortgage has allowed him to purchase property beyond what his monthly salary might suggest.

Once appearances become proof, everyone becomes vulnerable. The opposition must question. It must investigate. It must expose genuine wrongdoing wherever it exists. But it weakens both itself and the institutions of oversight when it substitutes conjecture for evidence.

Political theatre may generate headlines. It does not generate truth.

If there is evidence that assets were acquired unlawfully, then let that evidence be produced. But if the argument amounts merely to, “I cannot imagine how this person could afford these assets,” then it is an argument rooted less in fact than in personal disbelief.

Guyana deserves a higher standard of public discourse than this. We deserve debates grounded in documentation rather than deduction, in proof rather than presumption.

The ease with which reputations are placed on trial without evidence should concern every citizen, regardless of political allegiance. For once the politics of insinuation becomes acceptable, no one remains immune from its reach.

We do need vigilance against corruption. But that also requires intellectual discipline. Between suspicion and proof lies the hard work of investigation. Those who aspire to govern should know the difference.

(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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