PPP/C Government and anti-corruption

Jul 14, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The Americans have a serious problem with corruption in Guyana. Specifically, the US Government is unhappy with the PPP/C Government on a slew of matters that begin and continue without end with corruption as the main ingredient. Often, it is the only ingredient, and on each occasion, the government and its leaders are left looking weak and impotent on the one hand and comprised and lacking in credibility on the other. If it is public procurement involving hundreds of billions of dollars, corruption is a leading presence. If it is gold, as Guyanese are now learning what goes on beneath the surface, corruption is the cancer that is eating away at the fabric of Guyanese resources and institutions.

The US Department of the Treasury identified what it called a corruption network in action in the local environment. It is not just about what encircles private citizens, for the US Treasury had cause to point to corrupt government officials, and more than once in its initial public release. Bribery and corruption involving government officials could mean a network that is more pervasive than anything Guyanese have ever seen. But there is the PPPC Government now shuffling around and pretending to be serious about corruption in Guyana. When we at this paper called out the government on massive corruption, the reflexive response has been where is the evidence. We have published several articles on the corruptions seemingly plaguing honest work from being done at the National Procurement and Tender Board (NPTAB). Nothing ever came out of those, other than the usual insults and mockeries from the PPP/C Government’s paid and pampered propagandists. We have carried more than a few reports on major drug busts in foreign locations, which did little to boost Guyana’s profile in the international community. Local and foreign people with ethics on their side and clean governance as a priority have asked what is going on in Guyana, when these busts leave Guyana looking like a man caught with its pants down and nowhere to run. Both the government, its leaders, and the people who fetch water for them, have preferred to sit on their hands and wait for the discrediting winds to blow over. The reality is that when corruption in government is so widespread, it is like a lizard or a centipede: cutoff the tail of either and it keeps growing back.

Meanwhile, the PPP/C Government’s chief anticorruption officer, Bharrat Jagdeo, prefers to occupy himself with hopscotch and doing the hula hoop. When corruption in his government, and among his comrades, is the issue, he jumps about and dances around. Recall the corruption in the government surrounding the US$214M in audit findings, and how it was mysteriously and arbitrarily knocked down all the way to US$3M. Recall also how Jagdeo pretended that he was clueless about that corruption development that had no owner, until a ready soldier was found in Gopinath Gossai to take the fall. Part of the corruption involved in that public matter that couldn’t be hidden any longer was the silence of the powerful government figures who feigned ignorance. Another aspect of that corruption in government, as such relates to the oil industry, was the spectacle of those same powerful figures rushing to put as much distance as they could between themselves and that whole corrupt issue that would have cost Guyana so much. When Guyana’s half share in the oil is considered, it would have been over US$105M or GY$21B lost through official skullduggery.

Now the US Treasury Department eliminated all doubts about the level of corruption in Guyana and government when it referred to laws broken, and dirty officials in the public service. Those violating the public trust would not be clerks and other mid to low-level government workers. There is high probability that senior public servants are in that network, with even more than a handful of ruling politicians also tarnished. After all the rejections of corruption at runaway levels under the PPP/C government, the US Treasury Department released its report, and now local leaders are scrambling to get their houses in order. They had better go the whole nine yards with corruption, or the bell could toll for them next.

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