Dear Editor,
The PPP is challenging its opposition for direct proof of corruption, they even have the effrontery to say “show us the evidence of corruption.” The fact is that the PPP has aggravated a situation where it has elevated a ‘winner take all system’ to create an even more impotent, cash strapped, ineffective, uninformed opposition, which has the support of almost 45% of the people in this country, but rendered unable to really function effectively to police the enormous government’s spending. When one adds to the equation that many of the commissions which were designed to establish accountability and proper management of our natural resources, are made not to function properly or not at all, by manning them with sycophants instead of a cross section of the population representing its diversity as is visualized by our laws, it’s a massive corruption of the system, since that’s where shared governance starts, i.e. with the commissions.
If the principles of shared governance are thus eroded, then it is no reason to be astonished that you are now facing an angry opposition calling for shared governance. Over time, it has even evolved to a situation where we, as a nation, can sit at breakfast with our newspaper and read nonsensical excuses, like, “the Public Accounts Committee of parliament is being boycotted by the government members who can’t find the time to discharge their legislative obligations to this nation, because they are embroiled in the micromanagement of their ministries!” We have not had a substantive Chief Justice or Chancellor for more than 2 decades, because to make the appointment there must be consultations between the government and the opposition i.e. Shared Governance.
Our system does not visualize that a pastor, or a carpenter, or a cane cutter, or a watchman can actually run a ministry efficiently, as we see happening and which I have spoken about before. Our Westminster system visualizes that the Permanent Secretaries will be full time managers, running the ministries professionally and honestly, leaving the political ministers free to implement plans and policies based on promises made to the public in their manifestos. We don’t have the Westminster System anymore; we have what I have designated the ‘West Indian Minister System’! It’s nonsense. People who can’t run a salt goods shop are now running Ministries in a country with a $1.14 trillion budget!! Putting incompetent and corrupt ministers to run our affairs in such a system is a recipe for disaster. No wonder we are failing, and I repeat, in our system, ministers are there only to give political guidance.
It’s very clear that the processes of accountability and participation of the opposition in governance is being constantly and seriously eroded in this country, and one must conclude that there is mischief afoot i.e. corruption of the system for nefarious ends. And again I have to quote Fedric Bastal’s famous words, “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of people in a society, over the course of time, they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it, and a moral code that justifies it.” As far as the sanctity of contracts is concerned, let me say this, the only contract which is sanctified for politicians, is the one between them and a citizen, who they promise that if the citizen votes for them, they will do this and that for him/her. Once the citizen votes for that politician, it establishes a very valid contract between them, and it is the only one that is sanctified, because the voting public are the owners of the country, and not the politician, he is an employee of the country and the people.
In addition, there must be no secrecy in any contract between a government and any private organization. Contracts with a government cannot contain anything which is hidden from the people in that country before it’s implemented. Such secret contracts can only be viewed with the gravest of suspicions. And its corruption. Secrecy in a public contract should only exist to protect the technical measures, or technology which the contractee will employ to achieve the execution of the contract, nothing else! I am not now, nor have I even been a member of the PNC but in one of my very first commentaries in 2001, I wrote that Guyana is like a boat in the middle of a river, half rowing north and the other half rowing south, going nowhere. Good governance can only result when we demand accountability, and if the processes of accountability are being deliberately eroded, its corruption.
Given the situation I am describing, the current opposition was in power from 2015 to 2020, and did nothing to level the playing field for when they will be in opposition!! So Editor, who is eroding this accountability and creating the foundation for corruption? Well we have to look at the record, and for that we could look at the indexing of Guyana by an organization like Transparency International between 2002 to 2021. In 2005, our indexing was 75 i.e. 75% of our people saw corruption in our country. By 2016 that score dropped to 66 i.e. less people saw corruption in 2016 than in 2005, i.e. only 41 percent of the nation saw corruption. By 2020 our score dropped to 59%, 16 points lower than 2005!! As bad as the Granger administration was, and what they tried to do here in 2020 after the election was totally reprehensible and unforgivable, our people still saw less corruption with them between 2015 and 2020 than when the PPP were in charge 1992-2015. This is a massive drop.
Internationally, the differences between 2005 [59.1] and 2022 [57.0] was only 2.1 %. So is the perception of corruption in the imagination of a very substantial portion of the population who are marginalized by the very actions of limiting their leaders of the economic and other capabilities necessary to monitor and demand accountability of the system? Or is it a tangible enough phenomenon to warrant the attention of all? Any action by anyone to alter the legal functioning of any institution is corrupting the system. In crime there are several types of
evidence – the two major ones are described as 1. Eyewitness evidence and 2. Circumstantial evidence. The Encyclopedia Britannica tells us what Circumstantial evidence is, “in law, evidence not drawn from direct observation of a fact in issue. The notion that one cannot be convicted on circumstantial evidence alone is, of course, false” but “most criminal convictions are based on circumstantial evidence, although it must be adequate to meet established standards of proof”.
So let’s see, if a witness says he actually saw a man shoot his wife, that is eyewitness evidence; if however a man hears a shot and when he turns around he sees a man standing over the wife with a smoking gun in his hand, that is circumstantial evidence, he did not see the act of shooting directly, but the circumstances of what he saw can very easily lead any reasonable person to believe that he shot his wife. If the opposition is financially ill equipped to analyze the raw data, due to the level of secrecy being employed by the government itself here in Guyana, or are unable to hire personnel to investigate wrongdoing it knows is being conducted, then we must rely on circumstantial evidence as our proof. This being so, Editor, the public sees massive corruption in Guyana!! Remembering that the PPP only got 51% of the vote in 2020, but 60% of the total population are seeing corruption in 2023. People who voted for them are also saying that they are corrupt!
Sincerely,
Tony Vieira