Dear Editor,
A particular controversial word has surfaced periodically, and pointedly; it prompted some thinking. The word has been used by the GPL, GTT, and GWI. The word is sabotage. I confess to being indifferent to, if not critical of, what I believed was convenient cover for other corporate ills.
Well, that was then, as now I find myself close to some of that same personal and political perversity very accurately named ‘sabotage.’ It is now an integral aspect of the landscape, and of many shapes and varieties.
In earlier times, sabotage took the forms of burning cane fields, bomb scares, police inaction, bureaucratic resistance, and internal subversion, among a host of other concoctions. The objectives were to delay, thwart, and derail. Part of the calculation and strategy is to frustrate internal governance and make the overseers look incompetent and unequal to the tasks and responsibilities at hand. Since the GPL, GTT, and GWI are all national entities (and with checkered performance records), the stakes are higher. There is a willing listening audience that is acutely impacted; it is ready to believe the worst, and especially of government agencies and the government of the moment. A lot of mischief can be cultivated through organizational criticisms and fallout, whether such is of mismanagement or of inefficiencies. Given the history of the three entities named, I used to subscribe to some of the sharp assertions.
Editor, this posture has changed now that I am discerning sabotage in different and even more treacherous forms. It is more subtle, but no less reaching and disturbing. The following has been discovered through a relationship with a state body: leaking of confidential information; seeking and solidifying external relationships to the detriment of the organization; receiving gifts (financial and otherwise) on the side as part of the insidious compact; removing of papers; avoiding probing potentially problematic activity; engaging in superficial exercises; and representing nothing beneficial to the organization. It is mainly money driven. But this sinister, lucrative, and now cultural behaviour sabotages, and in aggregate points to concerted destabilizing efforts on a national scale.
On the vendor side, proprietary information is compromised. It could involve nicely paid stewards of servers, emails, and programs. The stewards are severely stretched through competing loyalties, lack of professionalism, competencies, and integrity.
They have lengthy histories of failing to deliver, or delivering non-working products. As part of the ugliness and dirtiness and sickness that prevailed, these same vendors were paid in full for delivering only a part of a project or product. Most times, that part is defective and impedes the work of the organization. The supposedly binding contracts, as then constructed, would have been urinated upon by any first year law school student. The shoddiness was part of the protection racket and a deliberate strategy to misuse the taxpayers’ money and circulate among incompetent trickster friends. It would not be surprising if some of that cash stash made its way to where it started from, with tactical political stops in between. My understanding is that this was the standard that permeated vendor arrangements all over in the good sweet times.
Here is another unfathomable reality: some employees are so thoughtless and reckless that they place the interests of outside parties above their own bread and butter, and the welfare of their own families. They are either unconscious or uncaring to the fact that the rewards will cease when they are exposed.
Their utility would be over, as they have nothing to disclose or sell; and there would be no place for the expense of them at the outfits that cultivate them and reward them. Separately, and internally, newcomers are looked upon as enemies and an iron curtain of secrecy, stonewalling, and steering is brought to bear. Resistance is in the works; there is fear of discovery. Discovery, however, has already happened on several fronts; remedies will be instituted. It is an ongoing process.
As I look at the national picture of powerful political ambitions and Machiavellian political struggles, I believe that sabotage, whatever quantity and quality it assumes, will not diminish, but rise to the detriment of the people. It will also redound to the disadvantage of the saboteurs themselves. The where and how and who are already known.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
