Dear Editor,
Integrity Commissions, Ethnic Relations Commissions, procurement commissions, and most other public serving commissions are one big farce. A joke played on Guyanese: see! Steps taken; interests being looked after. Whose, may I question? A great injustice is done to one or, sometimes, two individuals sitting on most of those commissions who have what it takes to deliver, but are swallowed up in the vortex and morass of their neighbours. In a word, protect the franchise. In another, secure one’s tenure. And if those constructions are of more than one word, who is counting? Who cares, when the primary interest is to keep collecting, followed by justifying being around and, last, earning a nod of continuance. Thus, a crime is perpetrated against Guyanese, and a patented one perpetuated.
Commissions start out with a bang, and a big push from those doing the swearing in of the selected, mostly party hacks, hangers-on considered worthwhile for a variety of reasons, including colour schemes, and spiritual breadth. The ethics of integrity of many of these citizens would themselves evaporate under any sunlight, and incinerate them with it. I know a handful of these people. If a public servant or parliamentarian were to turn up at their official door, throw himself (or herself) at their feet, give a full confession, I guarantee one thing. The public would be none the wiser, and for all that develops, the files would have nothing of substance to offer. This is integrity in action domestically. Integrity Commissions have been a sham, and will continue to be so. Check on the people who put them together. How what is noble, what is beneficial to the interests of Guyanese, could ever come out of the minds of such characters? Minds contoured towards the cunning and crooked. Never less than what is crooked.
This is how these commissions-ostensibly a screen to hold people in check, to maintain some sense of order-are born, grow, and extend the darkness now bedeviling this society. Give a man enough money, and he will develop myopia, imbecility, and amnesia. Shortsightedness is to claim hazy visibility regarding what is taking place. The pretense of being in an idiotic world is to distance from knowing what has to be done, and who has to be rolled in a carpet, and rolled in front of any speeding vehicle. The expense of speed bumps could be minimized. And the forgetfulness is that ingredient in the national character where people recall nothing, including who they are, what they should stand for, and why they were put where they are in the first place. Give a man or a woman of Guyanese extraction (well, most of them, anyway) a million a month, and the first thought and word that emerges is: ‘who has to be dealt with, just point him out.’ If public servants have nothing to hide, why their sloth, and why the commission’s sloth also? Even Bugs Bunny would suspect that the fix is in, as much as he loved winning races.
There are all these detours, exercises in game playing and consuming the clock with ‘training’ (SN’s editorial titled, “Integrity Commission penalties”, Feb 02). I insist that “training” is part of the charade, the keeping up of appearances, which Hyacinth Bucket would have envied. The levels of public servants that are required to report do not need any education relative to what has to be reported, to where, and by what time. Cut this confounded nonsense. Stop making fools of selves. Stop insulting the intelligence of the Guyanese people. Many Guyanese know those who have a little too much a little too quickly and a little too smartly. They usually are engaged in the opulent commerce of public service. This is what people with PhDs and JDs defend, as if they are mindless, while fearful of smiling because they would reveal their toothlessness and worse, gutlessness.
The AG, an official with his own special brand of honour, is normally an energy dynamo, a regular talk show host at full throttle. I have some lozenges to ease his predicament now that his chords atrophy from accumulated rust in the instance of the Integrity Commission. Can’t spit out any comrades. Boomerang effect. Fear factor. Only in Guyana can there be people like these. Commissions standing above and aloof and asinine also. Politicians who spawn them, and then applaud them when they putrefy. And public servants in such numbers at senior levels, who gathered certain fruits of office, and now claim ignorance and insipidity. They have a whole culture as backing.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall