Notice that your Eyewitness wants to talk about “reducing corruption”. So, when he heard the ABCEU Ambassadors say, “We look forward to more initiatives by the Guyanese Government to address and eventually ROOT OUT corruption”, he thought they were asking for the impossible. As even a saint (Augustine) once said about his (human) susceptibility to corruption, “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”!! The Christian Church even made it part of their most popular prayer: “lead us not into temptation”!!
Corruption ain’t gonna be rooted out – but we can certainly try to reduce the temptations for our Government workers to engage in corrupt activities. And here is where your Eyewitness wanna make it clear that he’s not talking about “corruption” writ large – involving the whole society. He’ll leave that to all those dedicated to saving our souls – not necessarily harvesting them!! He’s interested in just corruption by those who’ve been elected by us to look after our country’s affairs, and those hired to do the actual work in the Ministries and agencies. In other words, the Government Ministers and their workers.
And he suspects that this is what the Ambassadors really meant, since they continued, “Guyana’s sturdy anti-corruption policies, together with swift responses to evidence-based cases of corrupt practices, will clearly demonstrate to Guyana’s citizens and the rest of the world that the Government is committed to transparency, accountability, and responsiveness for the future benefit of all Guyanese”. So, let’s unpack what they’re suggesting.
First there’s the need for “sturdy anti-corruption policies”. So, right off the bat, they’re saying our anti-corruption policies ain’t “sturdy” enough. Now, your Eyewitness wishes they’d been a tad more specific, since they had to’ve detected some gaps in the present anti-corruption regime before making the claim. Is it the “procurement laws” or institutions? The powers of Ministers, or Government workers? The Traffic Police shaking down drivers? Reporters should ask some questions, since maybe the Government itself doesn’t know??
Then there’s the “swift responses to evidence-based cases of corrupt practices”. Is it the “swiftness” AND the “responses” that need rejigging?? The first might have to do with the backlog in the courts; the efficiency of SOCU and the Police Force, plus the DPP. Government corruption, after all, is a law-and-order issue, and its guardians are SUPPOSED to be independent of the Executive.
On responses…are they saying we should adopt the Saudi’s lopping off of various extremities…or the Chinese death by hanging, for corruption?
One intriguing part of the request was that if the measures were implemented, they’d redound to “the future benefit of all Guyanese”. Are they once again giving a “gentle reminder” that corruption is shutting out some Guyanese from our bounty??
…fear in elections institutions
There’s been a lot of criticism of our GECOM Chair after her testimony to the CoI into the attempted heist of our March 2020 elections by the PNC. But these critics ignore that, in Guyana, political power – secured at the polls – ain’t no garden tea party!! One previous CoI showed that those at the very top of the political ladder actually arranged for one of his challengers to be executed!! Even though the Chair pointed out that she was just a year with GECOM, as a Judge for decades, she had had inside information about how the PNC views losing elections!!
And it’s this knowledge about what might be coming down on her after the PNC realised they’d lost the elections that got her to behave erratically!! The proof is demonstrated by her testifying that she reached out to Amna Ally, the General Secretary of the PNC – the only friend she had in the Government!!
Why else would she call Ally, unless she felt that she could intervene on her behalf??
…oil ambiguity
Pres Ali just announced that the Government have launched bids for our remaining offshore oil blocks. As they’ve been saying for years, they’ll now show the PNC how to secure the best deal for Guyana on our oil!!
