Corruption on an unprecedented scale is tearing the heart out of Guyana. There have been several major corruption scandals, but PPP Government leaders, ministers, and defenders all say that it is about clean governance. There is some irony in that the very people standing before microphones are reported to employ fronts (family, comrades, and other proxies) to layer their accumulations, their self-enriching arrangements. If there is one thing on which the government could be congratulated, it is that many who know where the dead bodies are have sealed their lips. Why cut one’s own nose? Spoil the gravy flow, and then whereto, what? The silver lining is that life has taught that however deep dirty matters are buried, however complicated and sophisticated camouflaging efforts are, exposures come in time.
There is a man named Dr. Ramayya in Berbice. There is a property in Queens, New York. There are prime lands in Ogle and elsewhere all floating to the surface. One man resigned in disgust, another in haste. The latter reassured every one of his innocence. I believe him. I also believe that more needs to be said about that US$770,000 New York property, with the supporting narrative clear and convincing. The linkages are too neat. They are also a noose. The Guyanese who got the prime lands, are also the real estate conduit for the property development in Queens. Curiouser things have happened, but this unsettles. When President Ali starts gyrating around ‘process’ and Attorney General Nandlall stars in a cameo about ‘procedures followed’, that’s when I start listening more closely. What really have both honorable men answered? It is not what they provided. It is what they avoided. Land has blights and convicted felons their taints, but both can be eradicated. The negatives that trouble, not the men. Another Guyanese, a medical professional in New York, possessing almost the same grandeur as Drs. Ali and Nandlall succeeded in introducing some comedy in this grievous situation. He told a dogged media interviewer that he ‘didn’t measure the land’, so he couldn’t pronounce on its acreage. Process, procedure, ignorance. As smokescreens go, they’re thin. From Ali to Jagdeo to Nandlall, my messages have been simple and consistent. Deal with upright people. Let things be on the table. Speak straight, face the facts. The secrets have been too many, they build up, they spill out. Ramayya. Leaker. Resignation. Innocence. Politicians.
Over and over, I cautioned the PPP Government, and those three leading luminosities named: do the people’s business that way, or there is sure to be a day when a button breaks loose. Guyanese appreciate that revelations, allegations, and suspicions about runaway corruption represent only the tip of the iceberg. As stunning as VICE News, US$214 million Exxon audit, budget slush fund set asides, cash grant mysteries (reconciliations), and now prime real estate are, they are mere matchsticks in an out-of-control wildfire. With accumulated national budgets in the trillions, unexplained wealth is a byproduct that is now too gigantic to suppress. With unchallenged control over the levers of power, and no contrarian eyes [minds], there is a certain inevitability on the horizon. What Guyanese now sift through is less than half-priced prime lands, via some half-witted process (and procedure) involving half-and-half people that produced these half-cooked defenses. When clean people are sent packing and unclean people are held aloft as holy men and women, it shouldn’t surprise that corruption is a national industry in Guyana that is bigger than Exxon’s offshore returns. At least, Exxon invests its equity, however earned. The corrupt caste in Guyana invests nothing besides their machinations and maneuvers and willing men, and reap untold millions. They outdo Exxon, which takes some doing. As an aside, the Guyana Audit Office shouldn’t be happy to imitate Japanese stone monkeys.
Two last points need to be made. The PPP Government has convinced itself that corruption, no matter how chronic and costly, is not a vote loser. Its leaders should rethink, because there is usually a breaking point in life’s affairs, when people can’t take what is going on anymore. They have had enough. It was what the man in Region Six put out. The probability is high that there are hundreds who know as much as him. A few more could break the PPP Government’s code of omerta. That could of silence doesn’t conceal. It confirms. What accelerates to this state of mind is that Guyanese are catching hell, while their political heroes are enjoying the Cadillac lifestyle. Champagne. Caviar. Chanel. It stinks, I think. Considering the instances of corruption that have seeped into the public domain, those are massive enough and reach high enough for citizens to conclude reasonably that they are not the only ones. Clear-headed men and women, including PPP supporters, believe that corruption is a killer virus. It is not so much a concern when that killer corruption virus is in Africa or India. When it is in Guyana in a time of abundant money, then Guyanese come to a clearer understanding about what the PPP Government and its cabals have done to them. How they are being used and misused, taken for fools.
