‘No to Corruption. Yes, on Professionalism’- GHK Lall

By GHK Lall- The PNC’s Ganesh Mahipaul was unambiguous – ‘there’s no place for corruption.’  Thanks, sir; music for Guyanese ears.  It should be set on paper, in the PNC manifesto.  The AFC’s Nigel Hughes drew a line: ‘professionalization of the public service.’  Much obliged, counsel.  Is there a Guyanese, outside of the PPP, who disagrees with that call?  A line in another party manifesto.  No to corruption, yes to professionalization should be mandatory in all party manifestoes.  Write it, broadcast it, then live it.  Woe unto those, who don’t live up to all that is brightly, smoothly, promised now.

I run into problems with each of the two areas.  There is provision for a Human Rights Commission in Guyana, which all and sundry in and out of Guyana agree is a vital necessity.  Where is it?  It is easy to make a speech, commit to issues and areas on paper.  Then what?  There is a parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, and look at its succession of crises.

What have Guyanese taxpayers gotten for clarity and justice out of what was intended to be a protective body?  Whatever taxpayers received, truth and justice are not among its output.  But the committee is there, and it might as well be nonexistent for all the worth that it has given to Guyanese.

Professionalization of the public service would make paupers of politicians, ruling ones, other ones.  Can that still come into being, that professionalization?  Because professionalization could, would, lead to a cadre of self-respecting public servants who take their orders from the books, and respond to the demands of whatever grooming they received from their earliest days.

Does Guyana have those today?  No, absolutely not; not even close.  Personally, I know people from the Christian denominations who have been called to public service, and are more about money and falsehoods than even venal politicians.  If the professed Christians, then why is to be expected of rancid politicians who ogle the people’s riches, lineup their plans to help themselves?

Moreover, should there be moving to professionalize the public service, where would that leave the calculations of politicians?  With corruption and cronyism now so enmeshed in Guyana’s culture, show the one politician, that group, willing to make the sacrifice, so as not to prosper criminally from the fruits of public service.  The fruits of public service are now richer than ever, than ever imagined before.  National development priorities are a synonym for corruption.

So, too, the tendering process involving hundreds of billion annually.  In the last five years, well over a trillion dollars have been budgeted for public infrastructure.  There’s the mask used as cover, but which fails to disguise the corruption infrastructure that reaches to the peaks of this country’s politics, and those who make their home at those elevations.

My difficulty is that those who take the lead in waxing brilliantly about and against corruption are among the ones claiming the biggest cuts.  There’s the PPP which has had the time of its life in the last half decade, and panting for another five-year shot at the irresistible prizes that Guyana offers.  Seeking a contract, speak to me.  Terms settled with all the sweetness of a well-oiled machinery.  Concerns about exposure can be vanquished, as the right people have been put in all the right places.  Procurement.  Procurement guardrails, procurement guard dogs.

Yet the corruptions occur in broad daylight.  If so blatant in sunlight, what about when there is no moonlight?  The men and women in charge have bundles of explanations and justifications relative to corruption.  What they are unable to do, however, is provide explanations for their unexplained wealth.  I prefer ill-gotten gains.  A man can hide a million dollars.  He cannot hide a billion-dollar building.  A woman can conceal her brand of corruption, but plots of prime land presents a different type of real estate fragrance.  I have one house and two dog pens.  How many ministers and senior public servants close to corruption action can say the same?  Throw in 10 houses and 20 dog kennels, and I am still a pauper when compared to the minister of that, and the CEO or Divisional Head of something else.

I have little use for party manifestoes.  If the State constitution is spat and trampled upon, then political manifestoes are nothing more than toilet paper.  I stand before president, vice president, any other leader, and challenge (invite): prove me wrong.  Stand and be counted.  Never among the names held in discredit, but for what this country needs so direly, hopes for so fleetingly, and always so futilely.  Speeches and press conferences and promises are now best thought of as counterfeit currency.  Guyanese are the perennial losers.  Better make that quadrennial victims.