Dear Editor,
The business sector is the most versatile, easily adaptable, and best at positioning sector in this country, hands down. It is also the most prosperous, the most characterless, and the most self-centred. Guyana’s politics and business as practised here are tailor made for each other.
Businesspeople do better here than either venal public servants or ethically challenged politicians. How so? It is because politicians cannot convert en masse from a stated and known ideology and posture to another without major fallout. Individuals can, and do, cross the political floor; an entire political group is more severely constrained.
Not so, however, the great majority of local commercial generals. Yesterday they were true believers and worshippers of the political deities of the day, complete with the usual cant, while today, those same captains of commerce convert effortlessly to the newest religious power in town. They do so without a qualm, and unblinkingly. They did so some forty years ago; did a cartwheel some twenty years ago; and have come full circle as of right now. For their part, the political figures of the day embrace these very transparent characters.
It is the same sordid story over and over again: an engagement today, a project tomorrow, and contracts forever. Well almost… And the perpetual losers are the multitudes in the street busy tearing at each other’s throats. The majors rest contentedly in orchestra seats, while the foot soldiers agitate to unseat and replace one another in the gutter to which they are relegated and where they then unswervingly insist on staying.
On the other hand, business players ‒ shrewd, calculating, and ineffably greedy ‒ do more than survive, they prosper magnificently. They stand as an unparalleled local example of social cohesion (financial gimmickry aside) at work and success under all political conditions. They bring money; they take money; and they make money. They know how to grease wheels, especially their own, inclusive of spare ones, and clandestine ones, too.
Do not tell certain panjandrums about principle and honour and patriotism; whatever those might be, they are definitely not bankable. Those attributes distract, identify in the worst way, and isolate for targeting. Why contribute to such obvious self-destruction? Certainly it cannot be to improve the lot of the torn, divided, lost masses! Where is the profit? Or the capital gains (not declared) in such self-defeating altruism?
Like I say, it is great to be in the business amphitheatre in this place. Rules are fluid; political loyalty momentary; ethical concerns non-existent; and social enhancement the refuge of fools. Greed is good; it is answerable to no standard, has no limits; and has no place for either friends or conscience. Given the playing conditions, I think I am ready to sign up for this most durable of domestic careers, and an opulent one at that too. It definitely has proven to be a unifying force (mutual distaste held in studious abeyance) in the worlds of commerce and politics, and rewarding to the participants, regardless of pigment.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
