Part4
Introduction
Today’s column concludes this four-part series on the Guyana state. On January 20 the President announced May 11 as the elections date. This announcement did not address the prorogation of the Tenth Parliament or satisfy the constitutional provisions that require a proclamation, the dissolution of the National Assembly, and, thereafter, a fixed three-month time frame for holding these elections. The announcement therefore typifies the changes for the worse and the pernicious problems of public governance confronting the operations of the Guyana state. Clearly the present situation offers even greater scope for restricting financial oversight by the Tenth Parliament.
The column addresses three overlooked issues: 1) consequences flowing from framing the changes for the worse in the behaviour of the Guyana state as a process of deformation; 2) not indicating that several of the overlooked issues compound the changes for the worse; and 3) failure to highlight the articulation between changes for the worse in the behaviour of the state and changes in other societal areas.
Trigger event as process
My attribution of the trigger event behind the ongoing crises to the many instances of executive societal processes, has its antecedents and therefore should not be misconstrued as a one-off event. Several such antecedents are readily observed.
For example, terrorist activity aims at generating fear among a population in order to achieve a political objective and therefore, all recent instances of generating fear for political purposes potentially qualify as antecedents. These can therefore range from the police action against peaceful protestors immediately following the controversial 2011 elections to the deaths of Lindeners protesting against likely cuts of electricity subsidies, joblessness, and their feelings of economic marginalization primarily because they support the opposition-majority. The subsequent failure of the negotiated settlement of that unrest in Linden has added much to the fear and bitterness. Furthermore, the so-called “robust/focused policing” of crime, which appears to target the poor and powerless (popularly seen as mainly young black males and the communities they live in) while conspicuously avoiding those whom the public believes are ostentatiously profiting from huge unlawful gains, has added to the sense of fear with a political purpose in mind.
The thrust of the above however does not reside in the details of the incidents, but in the fact that, when taken together, they support the contention that changes for the worse are occurring in the way the Guyana state is operating. Recall that, as stated in the first paragraph of this series, my task is to create a framework for establishing the connecting thread to the ongoing narrative of multiple crises, economic contradictions, and threats of violence against government critics.
Compounding elements
Although not identified so far, other developments compound the changes for the worse in the behaviour of the Guyana state. In truth these have not been referenced before so as to avoid detracting from the impact of those deformations that I have already highlighted.
One of these omitted developments is that, regrettably, the President, several cabinet members, and spokespersons for the PPP/C have come out speedily, almost reflexively in the defence of the Attorney General (AG) on the publication of the taped conversation. Another is that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), using some forlorn logic I cannot fathom, has declared that there is no legal basis for charging the AG with any offence in Guyana law. However, all the legal persons whom I have questioned on this subject are confident that, in today’s world, possible charges are there (ranging from voicing intent to instigate serious felonies to my strongly held view that the actions constitute state terrorism) to warrant testing in the courts.
The absence of a forthright official response from the presidency and the DPP’s office aimed at containing any perceived terroristic implications of the AG’s action is likely to have grave negative impacts on acceptable future behaviour of state and non-state political actors in Guyana.
Articulation
Not unexpectedly, changes for the worse in the operations of the Guyana state will be articulated in other social dimensions. Thus, for example, they pose challenges to macroeconomic stability in operational areas like the phantom economy, remittances flows, the generation of financial bubbles and the tax system. As shown previously these are huge areas of the economy, where, regrettably, crime, and not economics, is the main driver of performance.
Similarly, my previous consideration of inequality and poverty in Guyana, sought to establish that, growing poverty and inequality is not the blind outcome of mechanistic and deterministic societal forces, but instead the outcome of combined choices made and implemented by those who control the state and dominate the means of producing livelihoods in the country.
A contagion effect also accompanies changes for the worse in the operations of the state. Thus for example, ordinary persons, (public employees!) get sucked in to the processes of state deformation. This is briefly portrayed in the next section.
Conclusion
In conclusion I refer to the results of a small sample of interview responses that sought to identify from among public employees their estimate of the ten most frequent financial irregularities practised by public employees (both politically appointed ones and others, with and without the active connivance of the political administration). This yielded the items presented below, but not in their order of frequency or likelihood:
1) Direct breaches of official financial rules/regulations/customs/etiquette/practices/controls/confidentiality/ laws
2) Collusion with the general public and other officials to avoid all the above
3) Fraudulent conversion of public resources (monies and other items) to private usage
4) Fraud, trickery, deceit by way of both acts of omission and commission
5) Deliberate mis-specification of items of public spending and receipt
6) Outright theft and forgery
7) Securing bribes and kick-backs
8) Ignoring conflict of interest situations
9) Acts of nepotism
10) Clandestine and open political work on behalf of the ruling party.
The consistency of these responses, if not their ranking, was striking thereby revealing, in my view, the pernicious problems of governance in the public domain.
