The removal of Dr. Marlan Cole from the position of Director of the Government Analyst-Food and Drug Department (GA-FDD) back in March this year may well not have come as a complete surprise to him. He probably knew only too well what was coming. His removal underscores, not for the first time, the reality here in Guyana that it is well-nigh impossible for a committed Public Servant to protect important state institutions against political warping without, themselves, being eventually ‘taken down’ by the powers that be.
There had been rumours of Dr Cole’s imminent removal long before a decidedly ‘tacky’ procedure finally confirmed his banishment to some amorphous office inside the Ministry of Public Health. Whatever reasons might have been proffered to the contrary, he had, finally, been removed for refusing to ‘roll over.’ His pushback against persistent political pressure to render the office that he held always amenable to the granting of improper favours, including political ones and his refusal to render the GA-FDD accommodating to the tearing up of the rule book, even at considerable public risk, had finally caused him to come to be seen as an ‘awkward customer.’ Dr Cole’s removal, in the context of the way ‘things work’ in Guyana was an open and shut political decision.
Dr Cole’s modus operandi collided ‘head-on,’ with the presumed prerogative of the political powers-that-be to form and break law to suit their whims and caprices. His apparent holding out of the rule book in response to ‘requests’ for political favours had become a problem.
Long before Dr. Cole was eventually shown the door, he must surely have become aware that his efforts to hold the line, so to speak, against the political weight of those who were determined to bend the powers of the GA-FDD to their will, was likely to end in failure and in detrimental consequences for his own tenure as Head of the GA-FDD. That is the way ‘the system’ works. The ‘lessons’ to be ‘learnt’ from the circumstances of Dr. Cole’s ousting can, hopefully, not be lost to his successor. As a public servant, you rock the boat at your peril.
Dr Cole, it seemed, had become far too seized of the importance of his responsibility to his legitimate mandate, too unmindful of the likely consequences of bucking the system. Given what one assumes was his understanding of the way that ‘things work’ in our Republic one might even be inclined to ‘accuse’ him of a generous measure of stubbornness. Surely, Dr Cole knew that he was in a fight that he could not win. The manner of his ousting ought to serve as an objective lesson for his successor and for functionaries in the wider Public Service.
The Government Analyst Food & Drug Department is intended to serve as a rampart against unmindful ‘invaders’ that can do untold physical and social damage to our country. Compromised, the Department can become a milch cow for official corruption and, simultaneously, a porthole for catastrophic social and public health compromises. It appears that Dr. Cole simply had no stomach for that kind of descent into perversion.
As we in Guyana have long been acutely aware, corrupt practices are a knee-jerk ‘go to’ option for political elites. More to the point, contemplated political careers not infrequently, factor into the perk of access to levers through which corruption-driven gain can be derived. There may well be far more evidence of this in contemporary Guyana than we might imagine. We have surely learnt from our repeated experiences that we swallow the declarations of our politicians with regard to their altruism-laden manifestoes, hook, line and sinker, at our peril.
Contextually, it was not Dr Cole, per se, but what had come to be seen as his persistent pushback against ‘the system,’ his refusal to (as we say in Guyana) go with the flow that cost him his job. To say that the circumstances of his removal were clumsy, transparently witch-hunting in its nature, is to indulge in overwhelming understatement. Dr. Cole had to be removed so that an operating culture driven by considerations of purely personal gain, could be granted a more generous measure of elbow room to allow for its continued survival.
