Kaieteur News is being vindicated

These days in the run-up to the elections many things are happening.  Accusations that had been unheard of are surfacing. Most of these have to do with corruption, particularly the acquisition of money from legal sources, but by illegal means.
For some time now, Kaieteur News has been focusing on some contracts that appeared to be funnels for channeling money to people close to the contract. The people on the campaign trail are now echoing the same thing. And some of them say that they had known all along.
This is where people like me wonder at the social responsibility of some people. Indeed, one cannot be in an organization and rat on others with impunity. More often than not the organization would defend itself. Some organizations do this with finality.
But what are the facts? Ordinary people are displaying untold wealth that only came about when they became close to the government.  In many parts of the world there would have been checks and balances that would have averted such behaviour.
Income tax would have gone after them and in a big way. Then there would have been the investigations. In Guyana, except someone really runs afoul of the government, the Guyana Revenue Authority rarely pays any attention. The result is that after a while the rest of society becomes accustomed to the show of wealth and the person is absorbed into the world of the wealthy.
But there are other allegations, some of them really personal, that the media would not touch. We are not into the private lives of people. However, I wonder why is it that people who seek public office cannot behave in a manner that would draw respect from the lesser mortals. Just yesterday I heard that the people in North America are marketing a pill that enforces moral values in an individual.
I do not know how that works, but I am sure that had that pill been around during the last ten years Guyana would have seen less crime, less disrespect for people and certainly less raids on the public treasury.
Morality is something that was once a common feature in the society. Indeed people did wrong things but they were in the minority. There were the acts of infidelity, of larceny and theft and certainly, of disrespect. But incidences were low as to be seen as aberrations.
Just this past week we learnt of a man who shot and killed his wife then killed himself. He left a note that accused his wife of infidelity. There are people who would have walked away because their morality would have taught them that life is more important than anything else.
It is this lack of morality that has contributed to the drastic decline in education. Children no longer see the need to learn anything because around them they see people who apparently did not do too well in school, but who now seem to be the kind of person that anyone would want to be.
These children of today do not consider that there are risks involved in the pursuit of wealth by abnormal means (although the means do not seem to be abnormal in today’s world). I have already spoken about the disappearance of skilled teachers and of the need to recapture the glory days when Guyana was one of the most literate countries in the world.
In this elections season, there are promises that measures would be taken to ensure a return to the days of high literacy levels and to the creation of people capable of living in this the 21st century, with its competition for just about everything.
On Friday, I happened to be at the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company’s launching of the BlackBerry service. I heard that the competition for that service has truly begun in Guyana.
The BlackBerry is one of the most versatile phones in the world. Even the President of the United States does not intend to be without one. Many Guyanese are like him. I sit anywhere and I see people fiddling with the phones all day. They are texting, surfing the Internet or catching up on global happenings.
So important is this phone that a young bank clerk stood in front of a car after a man had snatched her phone. Needless to say she died and her killers are still at large. There is now going to be a competition for the phone market.
I can imagine that within a few months, just about everyone would have a BlackBerry. One network already has 300,000 mobile phone users which could translate into 300,000 BlackBerry users. The bandits also go after the phones because there would be no shortage of buyers.
With all of this, one can see the drive to be among the fashionable, and among the people who seem to be the ones who need to be emulated. Everyone wants an uncomplicated life, a life of pleasure and comfort. The problem is that there is a moral road to these things but for me to suggest this is like talking into the wind.
And so we come back to the allegations of corruption. One way or the other I am willing to bet that despite the campaign promises there will be no investigation. The politicians would not want to rock the boat because they themselves may fall prey to the greed that seems to dog people who occupy high office.