Dear Editor,
Lisa Scott ends her letter captioned, “Let an Office of Transparency International be set up here”, with the thought “As many modern day politicians have found, it is almost impossible to hide resources acquired through corruption today. Let us now see how serious the government and opposition are about ending corruption”. We have a saying that where there is smoke there is always some fire. About the surest way to make sure that there isn’t any fire, or that it gets extinguished early if there is one, is to have watchmen dedicated to the task of looking for potentially inflammable material and substances, and shouting “fire” whenever they become inflamed.
The party in Government and the Government itself, on many occasions, casts accusations against their opponents based on nothing more than suspicion. And of course they are themselves, occasionally (and maybe more often than not, but it comes with the territory when you are in charge), on the receiving end of this practice by political foes. The standard being applied in this context is no higher than that applied by TI or other individuals or organizations looking suspiciously at the people and apparatus that make up state entities and their various appendages. Officialdom with the resources of the state at its disposal, especially in developing countries where “bills of individual rights” are seldom written in stone, can easily and effectively scrutinize the goings on in the lives of John and Jane Public. It is the goings on among the elite acting on behalf of the people, spending the peoples’ monies and conducting the peoples’ business that needs illumination.
During the last crime spree many supporters of the party in Government were wont to comment that the people in villages like Buxton, if they had nothing to hide, should have no problem with law enforcement sniffing around the environment in their investigation of criminal activity. Well the same reasoning should be applied when we talk about corruption in officialdom. If there is nothing to hide, there should be no fears of having impartial observers sniffing around the environment. If there is nothing to hide, there should be no fears of immediately enacting legislation in Parliament that will provide the citizenry with the long overdue power to audit monies they send to the treasury via taxes, or that which is received on their behalf from international donors. If there is nothing to hide, there should be no fears of having unfettered independent media apparatus, including radio broadcast stations, peering into and scrutinizing the performance of the Government and its functionaries who are paid with taxpayer dollars. In a real democracy the Government is answerable to the people beyond the partisan expressions in the voting booth every election cycle.
Before we in Guyana become indignant over the US citing of gaps in the machinery we have in place to police wrongdoing at certain levels of our society, we ought to stop a while and contemplate a couple of things. The President of the United States of America has to file tax returns and come clean on what he makes and owns every year. And any American can have access to that information. This also goes for the members of Congress and everyone feeding from taxpayer dollars. Senators and Congressmen in the US go to prison when they are caught in wrongdoing. Scooter Libby, a former advisor to the Vice President of the United States of America, perhaps the second most powerful individual on the planet, (some would argue that he is the most powerful), was just found guilty of lying to a federal grand jury and most likely will go to jail for that prevarication. It might be cathartic to some of us to scream and shout that the US is the most corrupt place on the planet. But absences of prosecution against officialdom for corruption and wrongdoing in developing states and localities are not bona fide or reliable indicators of the non existence of those vices. It is more evident of an absence of checks and balances among the structures of power in such localities to monitor and bring to an accounting our Teflon leaders. Sadly it boils down to a case of quis custodiet ipsos custodes in Guyana and other developing nations.
I am an avid critic of the so called drug war in which the United States of America and many developing nations, including Guyana, are engaged. I am not critical of the efforts to police and control the manufacture and sale of psychotropic chemicals that are derivatives of growths like the Coca and opium plant. When you see the devastation, the violence, the utter wretchedness involvement with those substances bring to the lives of people you will not take them lightly. What I am critical of is the broad-brush approach this war has taken, its focus on and incarceration of the minority poor lured into usage or distribution, and the utter hypocrisy that emanates from the mouths of those who preen and vilify, then leave for the smoke filled clubs to drink themselves silly. The tone of this war in Guyana is no different than it is in the US, so our pointing fingers must include recognition that the thumb is looking right back incriminatingly at us as a society. After all, the same things that fuel drug use and the drug trade in the US, fuel drug use and trade in Guyana. In a sense we are caught up in a symbiotic relationship with the US and the world as it relates to the social and commercial aspects of these products. We can claim no rights to the moral or ethical pedestal until we marry understanding, empathy and compassion to our law enforcement efforts to mitigate the social scourge of drug use and the drug trade. And we can retain that independent local approach, while coalescing with the US to put the shackles on the Teflon barons whose affluence allows them to remain aloof and relatively immune from legal and social sanctions.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
