In addition to crime, corruption was one of the issues at the top of the agenda during the last elections. One of the major reasons for the change of government in 2015 was that the PNC-led opposition was able to have the charges of “corruption” against the PPP administration become an article of faith in the minds of many. Even well-wishers of the PPP began to concede that after 23 years at the helm of governance, inertia might have set in to vitiate efforts against that scourge, which had become entrenched prior to 1992.
Against this background, the new PNC-led Government had inevitably established a de facto standard to evaluate their performance once in Government, in reference to probity and corruption. But very early on, there were signals that rather than resolving the problem, the coalition Government was going to simply redefine it.
At the opening of its new headquarters in Kitty, the leader of the AFC felt no compunction in publicly hailing one of its major campaign contributors as financing the building. This recognition of a contributor would ordinarily be innocuous, excepting that another leader of that party, and now a senior member of the Cabinet, had only recently in a burst of candour, announced that the self-same campaign contributor had been awarded a massive contract to introduce wind power to Guyana. This necessitated several governmental approvals, including a much-coveted “Power Purchase Agreement”. But rather than leaving any nexus between governmental largesse and campaign contributions to the imagination of the audience, the minister proposed that businessmen make “investments” in political parties for which they expect “returns”. While the candour might have been refreshing to some, it was sobering to most Guyanese.
The question on the minds of the citizenry was how would corruption ever be controlled if payments were now openly accepted by the government as “political investments”? Recent revelations that 8 million was expended by private business contributors to build the Jubilee Stadium at D’Urban Park for the government have raised questions as to who actually made these “investments” and which government contracts may be awarded as “returns”?
Another instance, where in the public concluded that there has been “corruption”, was their “sole sourced” award of the contract for the Speciality Hospital on a government of India loan to the Indian Company Fedders Lloyd, for which Vice President Khemraj Ramjattan had lobbied before, during and after the previous government had awarded and then rescinded the contract to another company. The “explanation” that Fedders Lloyd had not paid Ramjattan a fee strained the credulity of the jaded populace, especially when the company was subsequently blacklisted via a World Bank appraisal for shady “procurement violations”.
The British statesman Lord Acton had posited, “All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But in Guyana, it would appear we have turned the aphorism on its head: Corruption is power and absolute corruption is absolute power. We had seen this ironic, but ultimately tragic inversion during the first period of PNC’s rule in Guyana after elections began to be routinely rigged after 1968. The lesson, we would posit, is once the rot of corruption is given an excuse – back then “to keep the communist PPP out of office”; now “to give returns on political investments” – it inevitably spreads throughout the body politic until the entire political, social and economic edifice crumbles, as it did by 1989.
What is most insidious when corruption becomes endemic is while the corrupter from outside the government and the “corruptee” from within both satisfy their immediate desire for quick material gains, the corrupters who are members of society now accept the status quo and corruption quickly becomes institutionalised. Everyone soon seeks to have someone who he/she can bribe – from the Policeman on the roads, to the Minister in his office – and boasts about having “lines”.
Soon the corruptors themselves are seen to possess power – the power of lines and access – and corruption becomes power. Guyanese must ensure history does not repeat itself.
