‘Because what we must learn to do, we learn in the doing: we become a master builder by building and a zither-player by playing the zither. So, too, do we become just by carrying out just deeds, moderate through acts of moderation, brave through acts of bravery’ (Aristotle).
This quote from Aristotle comes to mind as I consider the highly simplistic explanations and responses that have emanated from the government and its supporters in the controversy that surrounds the specialty hospital.
Aristotle was the founder of practical philosophy, which embraces both ethics and politics as they are concerned with our attaining the means to live the good life. He was a purveyor of virtue ethics, which focused not on what men do but on what they are and how they become what they are.
Aristotle believed that the highest human good, the condition after which we consistently seek for its own sake is ‘happiness’. Even when we choose honour, pleasure, etc., we choose them because we believe they will bring us happiness. A virtue is a necessary condition for our being happy.
It is also ‘… a condition by which the person becomes good and by which he carries out his own tasks well. It is a mean between two undesirable extremes. The two extremes are vices, which are diametrically opposed to each other and which, together, stand in opposition to virtue. Courage is the mean between fear and recklessness and generosity is the mean between wastefulness and greed’ (Muel Kaptein and Johan Wempe (2011) Three General Theories of Ethics and the Integrative Role of Integrity Theor.y www. ssrn.com/abstract=1940393).
A virtuous person derives pleasure from acting virtuously, and a person is virtuous when acting correctly has become ingrained. As we have seen from the above quotation, virtues are acquired and grow in practice; by our being in an environment in which they are continually utilised.
I have argued previously in this column that it is good that the PPP/C should be out of government for two essential reasons. Firstly, it had been in office too long and the negative consequences that normally result from such longevity in government were enhanced because its rule was founded on our peculiar kind of ethnic political alliances.
Secondly and relatedly, our political environment allowed the PPP/C to operate a democracy without the necessary political virtues of honest, open and responsible government, effective citizen control over policies, informed and rational deliberation, equal participation and power, etc. (Democracy without political virtue. SN 30/4/2014).
Quite apart from the instrumental value of such moral underpinnings, they also help to create the social conditions for our gradually growing into a more good and virtuous people. Therefore, the expectation was that with the removal of the PPP/C, we would enter a period of governance in which there would be a greater flowering of political virtue. One would, however, have to be deaf and blind not to recognise that such has not been the case.
The problems the regime is now facing with the specialist hospital contract has brought us to the end of the ethical line, with signposts at breaches of the Cummingsburg Accord, irregular posting of political acolytes and nationally decried salary aggrandizement.
For over two decades of PPP/C rule, those currently in government argued that the tendency of the PPP/C to compare what it was doing with the previous PNC regime was illegitimate since the former came to government promising much improved governance. But the regime, having signally failed to take the high moral ground in public decision-making, in the specific case of the specialty hospital contract and in relation to most of its other violations, has taken to benchmarking its behaviour against that of the previous ‘wicked’ PPP/C regime.
In order to blindside the general public, we are even plied with irrelevant propaganda about what the PPP/C may or may not have promised the new contractor.
We are told that Guyana would benefit by the regime not going to tender because the proposed contractor will hold its price at the previous tendering cost. Given the numerous avenues available to contractors to claim additionalities, I would take such a commitment with a huge chunk of salt.
Tendering has, however, never been about simply getting the lowest cost; it is also about virtues such as fairness, openness and equitability, which are as important in cultivating a more moral system of public management. Indeed, if cost is the central issue, it may be possible to get a much better bargain for the nation by simply sole sourcing and negotiating.
I believe that the problem we must face as a nation is that for the most part, the converse of Aristotle’s statement must also logically be true, namely that in the absence of a virtuous political context one cannot easily learn to act virtuously. Our entire post-independence history has been one of massive political chicanery, and all those now in the halls of political power and those waiting in the near or far wings for their chance have honed their craft in this cesspool of political vice. As such, what chance do we have of transcending this unique dilemma?!
Some would argue that all political processes are somewhat mired in amoral political behaviour, but on a continuum of one to ten, if the best systems are close to one, in my view we are very near ten. Thus, what confronts us is the near impossible task of attempting to find ‘better’ rulers in conditions where they are almost nonexistent.
Bearing in mind its perennial critique of the tendering process under the PPP/C, particularly as it related to the specialty hospital project, to have acted virtuously, once the regime had decided to proceed with the project, it should, without a blink of an eye and regardless of what any law or practice allowed, have retendered it!
Given its track record rooted in a misguided effort to create political dominance and an extreme hubris that resulted from the belief that our ethnic political context favoured it, the PPP/C government needed to go.
But the behaviour of the current regime since its accession to office does not suggest that we are anywhere near clear of the woods. Early signs suggest that much more thought needs to be given to how we are governed, partly because ‘what we must learn to do, we learn in the doing’!
