Moral authority requires a consistent moral record

Dear Editor,
If one is able to take off their partisan political lens and put aside their emotions and try to be rational in their analysis, then a reasoned outcome may be achieved.
I believe Guyanese can accept that moral authority in politics as in life cannot simply be proclaimed. It has to be earned through consistency, credibility and a willingness to submit oneself to the same standards of accountability demanded of others.
That is why I put it to the public that the Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed’s increasingly forceful lectures on corruption deserve scrutiny against his own political history and present legal circumstances.
Mr Mohamed remains entitled to the presumption of innocence regarding the allegations underlying the United States’ extradition request. After all, allegations are not convictions. Equally, however, a political leader who places others on trial in the court of public opinion cannot reasonably object when the public examines his own record.
If he maintains that the American allegations are false, he is entitled to every lawful defence available to him. But there remains a legitimate political question: if he is as confident in his innocence and moral standing as he projects himself to be, why not ultimately confront the allegations before the court with jurisdiction and seek complete vindication? Let me be clear exercising legal rights to resist extradition is not evidence of guilt, but legal entitlement and political credibility are not the same thing.
What is of paramount importance is an even greater contradiction.
Mr Mohamed has publicly taken credit for helping the PPP/C return to Government. His family also became extraordinarily wealthy during decades in which they operated successfully within Guyana’s lucrative gold sector under the said PPP/C Administrations. Wealth itself is not evidence of wrongdoing. Neither is success in mining. But acquiring unmatched favourable possession of highly prospective gold-bearing State lands endowed with significant mineral resources obviously creates not only suspension of political favourability, but enormous commercial opportunity, particularly when gold is sold into a market governed substantially by international prices.
The legitimate question, therefore, is not whether the Mohameds became wealthy. It is this: was the political and economic system Mr Mohamed now so vigorously condemns acceptable while he and his family were prospering within it?
Where was today’s relentless voice against corruption during the years when relations with the Government were apparently cordial and beneficial? Where were the sustained interventions on the major social issues affecting Guyanese? If such a record exists, it should be produced and judged fairly. But if this extraordinary political awakening principally followed the deterioration of that relationship and the extradition request by the United States Government, Guyanese are entitled to question whether they are witnessing principled reform or political retaliation dressed in moral language.
Mr Editor, there is also a remarkable American irony in Mr Mohamed repeatedly tagging the United States Embassy in his social-media postings while simultaneously confronting an extradition request originating from the said United States authorities. The fact is social media cannot establish innocence. Neither Government nor Opposition propaganda can do so. Ultimately, evidence tested through due process must determine criminal liability.
I must hasten to say that none of this means Mr Mohamed has no right to criticise the Government. He absolutely does. Democracy requires scrutiny and opposition, it is what help makes Governments serve the people more.
But the central question remains:
Had Mr Mohamed never fallen out with the Government he once supported and under whose tenure his family’s businesses prospered extraordinarily, Guyana and the people who support him would not have heard these denunciations today.
That question should be answered by the historical record, not speculation: what did he condemn or speak out against when relations were good? What national causes did he champion before becoming an Opposition politician? When exactly did he conclude that the Government he benefited from socially and economically, the Government he publicly declared he helped politically was fundamentally corrupt?
People can change. Political relationships can change. Principles, however, become most credible when they are defended even when doing so is personally inconvenient.
Moral authority is not measured by how loudly one condemns yesterday’s friends. It is measured by whether one’s principles remained intact when those friendships were powerful, profitable and politically convenient.
Until that contradiction is convincingly answered, one question will continue to follow the Opposition Leader:
Was the system always unacceptable or did it become unacceptable only when it stopped working for him?

Yours respectfully,
Jermaine Figueira
Former Member of Parliament