To varying degrees, the misdirection of state assets by functionaries is a region-wide phenomenon. Whether or not governments have, over time, worked to eradicate this phenomenon is open to question. Across the region there exists the widespread view that stealing from the state is regarded as a perk of political office never mind the fact that, to varying degrees, the practice robs the hapless countries of resources for channeling into legitimate pursuits.
One suspects that the practice of stealing from the state here in the Caribbean varies from territory to territory as does the level of urgency associated with remedying the problem. One imagines, as well, that governments in the region are not unmindful of what, these days, is the enhanced sense of urgency reflected in the uncoded messages from the international lending agencies like the World Bank, the IMF and the IDB that have to do with profligate spending and the questionable channeling of public funds.
Currently, in Trinidad and Tobago, the exertions of the government of Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley in the matter of responding to this challenge would appear to be manifested in its efforts to pilot what is termed The Whistleblower Bill through the House of Representatives.
In the course of his exertions Dr. Rowley has had quite a bit to say about what can only be described as the sheer scale of what, sometimes, is the cynicism and barefacedness of the manner in which state agencies under his own administration manage the public purse. In the process of a recent presentation in the House of Representatives Dr. Rowley referenced a particular instance in which an entire page (not the signature page) had been removed from an ‘authority for payment’ which had been overseen by him personally and had been subjected to what can only be described as a grotesque alteration. “Someone had changed the page of the sum that was to be approved but it did not affect the signature page and the increase was $100 million more,” is what Dr. Rowley said. It is by no means difficult to discern that this was a particularly cynical and unauthorized adjustment to a document involving several millions of dollars and one shudders to think that this might well be par for the course in the handling of such matters. The payment document in question had to do with a debt owed to a foreign company and it seemed as though after the approval of the document had been effected the handlers of the payment discovered that $100 million more was owing so they simply removed the requisite page and replaced it with a new page reflecting the inclusion of the additional amount. “When I inquired of those responsible, I am told that after the approval, they found out about other matters owing and they just added it to the bill,” Dr. Rowley is quoted as saying. What, in effect, had become a falsified document was withdrawn.
Currently, efforts are underway in the twin-island Republic to pilot the so-called Whistleblower Bill through the House of Representatives. “What this bill is asking us to do is to encourage those who know. If you know something, say something and this country will protect you as far as we are able to.” Put differently, the Whistleblower Legislation marks what would appear to be an attempt to seek to add a further protective ring around the already existing procedures associated with the administering of state funds. Whether it will work is, of course, an entirely different matter.
The Whistleblower option currently being considered by Trinidad and Tobago is, in effect, an ‘open confession’ by the Rowley administration that corruption had become a cancer “especially inside of the institutions in the Government, in the State enterprises,” according to the T&T Prime Minister. In effect, the Whistleblower legislation seeks to extend the job of protecting the country’s resources to ‘whistleblowers,’ in effect, anyone who has information that might close the door on those who seek to steal from the state “Out there in the streets, somebody knows…… And what this bill is asking us to do is to encourage those who know. If you know something, say something and this country will protect you as far as we are able to.”
Nor, it seems, is Dr. Rowley indifferent to the fact that the full and effective implementation of the Whistleblower Bill is required if what in fact is a ‘special majority legislation’ is to be passed.
Arguably the most poignant comment made by Dr. Rowley during his presentation on the Whistleblower Bill had to do with his reported assertion that people had become ‘de-sensitized’ to corruption an assertion that may well be applied here in Guyana where, rather than seek to forge a collective response to the scourge of stealing from the state, there has evolved, or least so it appears, a widespread view that stealing from the state serves as a kind of perk for those suitably positioned to enjoy it and that the occasional noises from the ‘big players’ in the political game amount to no more than political theatre that must come and go with monotonous regularity in order to delude the populace as a whole into thinking that one political side or another gives ‘two hoots.’
Careful observers of the pattern of public and political discourse on the issue of corruption at the level of stealing from the state in Guyana would long have observed that it manifests itself, more or less, at the level of spectacular political outbursts and interludes of official intervention that shine a spotlight on suitably prominent personages, allowing free rein for public sideshows that last for a while before making way for fresh theatre.
But we in the Caribbean are not, in a global sense, laws onto ourselves. Fresh global imperatives are giving rise to changes in the timbre of international relational relations. The truth is that we now have no choice but to heed the warnings from regional and international organizations like the World Bank, the IDB and the Caribbean Development Bank that require us to ‘wind up. the monopoly games that we have grown accustomed to playing with state funds, earned and borrowed and to embrace higher standards of accountability in the management of the public purse. What Dr. Rowley has had to say recently suggests that his administration may now have ‘gotten the point’ about Trinidad and Tobago’s accountability deficit. Contextually, there is need for much greater clarity from the political administration in Guyana and from the political parties across the board as to just where they stand in the matter of stealing from the state.
