Latest update May 26th, 2024 12:39 AM
Jan 08, 2023 Editorial
Kaieteur News – The PPPC Government is having a grand time talking out of both sides of its mouth at the same time. Listen to any Leader in the Government, and he or she would be quick to assert how much the regime is about transparency, truth, integrity, and that it has nothing to fear because the record speaks loudly for it. Apparently, the PPPC Government has its own sound system, which it listens to, so that the echoes will provide confirmation as to the clarity of its practices, and the cleanliness of its governance, when the reality is the opposite.
Anybody can make fancy speeches, and there are none as dedicated to that craft as those in today’s Government. If they spend a small fraction of their time doing right by the Guyanese people, instead of trying to mislead citizens through a barrage of propaganda, this would be a totally different country. One of the areas of governance that has come under scrutiny, and which stands as a poster child of how the Government protects itself from too much scrutiny, is the Integrity Commission. In this country, given the torrent of malfeasances in government offices, we need more than an Integrity Commission. What is needed is an Integrity Ministry, an Integrity Court, and an Integrity jail.
But an Integrity Commission (Commission) is what we have, and with that we will have to make do. Presently, the Commission is hobbled to the point where it can barely function, and then only at somewhere around quarter speed. One of the tried and proven tricks with an entity like an Integrity Commission is to strangle it of resources, so that it is prevented from doing its work to any satisfactory level. It is there, but that is all there is to it. Currently, the Commission is woefully understaffed, which means issues that should be prioritized just have to be left alone, in the hope that they will be gotten around to at some time. It stands to reason if a body with the impressive sounding name of Integrity Commission cannot do its job effectively, then it just as well might not be around, mocking everybody by its listless, impotent presence.
But this is how PPPC Governments, past and present, have operated. The President was all smiles and smooth words when the Integrity Commission was announced, with its members introduced to the Guyanese public. There was an all too brief spark of interest, of hope, that good things would result from the presence of the new Commission. Of course, it did not take too long for Guyanese to come to their senses, and realize that it was all part of the smokes and mirrors (games) of PPPC Governments, with plenty of promises, and nothing else. By now, Guyanese have come to appreciate that what comes out of this government is much sound and it is all hollow.
For example, there is the President always insisting that he and his Government are about transparency, and that there is none better. We are still insisting to the President and others that what he says about transparency does not reconcile in the least with the endless secrecies practiced by his PPPC Government. Reviews completed and reports issued for Field Development Plans relative to Payara and Yellowtail are still kept hidden from the Guyanese public, and that is only a start. Promises were made to publicize the Payara review, only for walking back to occur. Vice President Jagdeo has repeatedly promised to release the mining contracts and to date he has delivered not a scrap of anything.
This is not leadership, and it certainly is not transparency. When a Government is compelled by circumstances of its own construction to engage in these kinds of sleazy tactics, then there is nothing possessing integrity here, only possibly the dirty.
Last, examine Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency and what it has been made into, and no self-respecting Leader would take ownership of an entity of such dreadfulness and disfigurement. When matters and agencies are reduced to this sickening state, then it is a testimony to the kind of Government and leadership that is in place. And no amount of propaganda can wish that away.
Wake up before the sun rises tomorrow, please.
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