Dear Editor,
The claims of discriminatory targeting, sanctions, and effects emanate mainly from the commercial sector. Careful examination of such sensitive charges indicates that, on occasion, there is some reasonable basis for the assertions made. In the next instance, intuition and circumstances compel into some darker alleyways on an already dark matter.
It is that discrimination is an easy, convenient, and recklessly used shield intended to camouflage nefarious practices first spotlighted and then arrested. Men who have their interests thwarted and derailed lash out with deliberate and calculated disregard for truth and accuracy. They will undermine and injure to get their way; and if the race card is the one that has to be played, then so be it. It will be used. Unfortunately, once that poison is released, the toothpaste cannot be returned to inside the tube.
The objective is to corner and intimidate ethical bureaucrats into inaction and collaboration. Entrenched men who were long accustomed to paying their way (and getting their way), who trampled upon laws, regulations, and procedures, and who have grown rich and powerful through a raft of rackets are unready and unwilling to comply with policies and standards being robustly implemented.
Those who routinely transgressed, now cry foul loudly and piercingly. If they cannot continue to have their way, and are prevented from enjoying the condoned illicit freedoms of yesterday, then discrimination it is. In hypersensitive volatile Guyana, it is enough, nothing else matters.
For its part, the government is surrounded, if not immersed, by two situations. One is a legacy; the other is self-inflicted and increasingly self-evident. The legacy circumstance is that preponderant presence in the economic base and economic endeavours. Speculation, self-incrimination, institutional evaluation, and expert conviction all combine to register unspoken tawdry truths against this preponderant presence. Among these unsavoury truths are price gouging, unfair competitive practices, unclear financing, tax evasion, and non-payment to government of mandatory deductions.
These open secrets are now firmly embedded longstanding pillars in the edifice of financial improprieties. Unsurprisingly, this opulent way of life has provoked slithering defensive postures and counters from those who benefited for the longest while. It is said that the best defence is an aggressive offence, and the best defence that can be customized for the Guyanese context is the corrosive appeal of discrimination.
It is sure to gain traction, and guaranteed to attract a crowd.
As if this is not enough, it can be said with a solid degree of confidence that almost every area, if not all areas, in Guyana have some strain of taint and corruption at work. This has burgeoned beyond ordinary comprehension and rational control. Every time, therefore, that the government dares to question, to halt, or to reverse the financial modus vivendi, the shouts are sure to follow through that ugliest and most combustible word: discrimination. Dedicated bureaucrats end up with a label on the forehead; it begins with the letter ‘r.’ This is inherited, and given the wide territory under scrutiny, it is hard to avoid, even when unjustified.
On the other hand, and in terms of on-the-ground, de facto, constructive discrimination, a case can be made using the self-inflicted wounds and records of the government. This is particularly obvious, and increasingly so, in the field of employment, whether hiring or firing; or in involuntary termination, as in contract non-renewal.
The stories proliferate of either men and women removed, or men and women denied. Highly qualified citizens have shared encounters from the job search process, where they felt that a charade was in progress, and it was merely going through the motions. Stated differently, pre-selection had already occurred and interview exercises are merely for the record. Stated even more pointedly, the instincts and sentiments were that these job hunters were the wrong kind in the wrong place. It should bring back that old monstrosity about those who need not apply.
Editor, there is more subtlety in these sophisticated days, but the objectives are the same, and so are the results and complexion of the headcount. In the same vein, even a cursory scan of the high profile hires of the last year and a half reveal that, at a maximum, somewhere between ten and twenty per cent of hires have gone to the ethnic base not of the winners.
Arguably, it is closer to ten per cent (or 1 in 10), if that. Whatever the number, minuscule and near immaterial, it is illuminating in a system of victors and spoils. It could be that the rejected do not measure up in that most mysterious and demanding of realms called the subjective. No subtitles should be needed.
Meanwhile, in the world of lesser lights and the humdrum of ground level routine, the involuntary removals and reductions are reported to be heavily biased against those not identified with the winner’s circle and its traditional throng. Even as the talk of social cohesion flickers sporadically and spasmodically in the consciousness, history is repeating itself. It is already deflating.
In sum, I am inclined to minimize and question claims of discrimination from the commercial sector con artists, while I detect evidence of the same in the hiring and firing of those who lost. Against this backdrop, the strains of ‘One love’ quickly assume an entirely new meaning. It is that those cocooning lyrics could be for the benefit of a single ancestry and segment in this land of so many others.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
