Dear Editor,
Corruption keeps riding the waves and bears examination again today. I know it is tiring all around (self included), but it demands ongoing attention and commentary, if only to keep us honest. It can neither be wished away nor minimized.
It is false and infuriating and ugly. So say those forced on the defensive, those with exposure, and those who should have furnished an accounting (but refused). How does this measure against, and reconcile with, stark reality?
First, a whole lot of money, public money, resides in murky, inaccessible, and undisclosed terrain. That much has been the practice. Where are the assets? How much was paid and to whom? How much was spent? Who are the principals? Where is the paper trail? Since there are no answers forthcoming, the worst is assumed. It is like flight from arrest.
The operations have grown sophisticated through long practice. There is now compartmentalization, deniability, divestiture, family fronts, and other friendlies. The webs woven are intricate, and reach all the way to the Orient, among other clandestine havens.
Third, putting aside the cheating self-serving excesses involved with the sweetheart land deals and other state assets, the opulent and unexplainable lifestyles exhibited cannot be satisfactorily defended by either earnings or savings or inheritance or investment returns or contractor giveaways (something for something) or family support (a much scorned and disbelieved fallback option). If such wealth is not traceable to any of these things, including the eleemosynary, then what? The writing is crooked, but decipherable.
As a re-migrant, I can testify to the tremendous cost of living here. Using my own subdued, somewhat pedestrian standard, I submit that the higher paid in this country (GPL and GuySuCo former CEOs excepted), would have nothing left from their high six-figure earnings to splash and splurge and accumulate, as they have done. That is, unless they won the Lotto frequently, or received substantial remittances just as often. Perhaps, they did.
Fourth, it is opportune for the introduction of a bedtime story making the rounds locally. Those who have already built impressive residences for themselves and the ladies in their lives now communicate rather expansively and casually of their readiness to proceed to a higher plane: They gush of now constructing dream houses. Way to go baby! Money is not an issue. The question is this: where did it come from in such cascading quantities?
Fifth, while the headmen and headwomen were occupied in perfecting their lucrative schemes and scams, the other guys and gals down the line, and throughout, also seized the moment to engage in their own rewarding activities at the expense of the taxpayer. Who could dare call them out? Who was so reckless as to risk self-exposure?
Editor, if that is considered an exaggeration, chew on this. There was this callow fellow, of about twenty-three years of age, attached to the biggest money machine in the country. His name came up in a fraud. He owned several properties and ten taxicabs at the time. This youngster was slick enough to place the holdings in names other than his own. He was glad to be allowed to resign and count his pickings in relative obscurity.
Nowadays corruption has become so ingrained in the culture that serial participants speak of it in sly, casual terms. It is like a well-known illicit affair – acknowledged to the point of smugness and recklessness.
Multiply all of these instances many times over; aggregate the totals; and then let there be a hard serious confrontation with what is undeniably real versus what is claimed to be either imagined or blown out of proportion. It will be discovered that those who claim to come down on the side of angels, will suddenly find themselves without heavenly company and alone. All of them.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall