When greed overpowers need

                   – on ‘corruptocracy’ and kleptocracy

This commentary just cried out last weekend to be written by me. Even at the risk of joining others who make a mantra and seem paranoid regarding corruption and thievery in high places, I was moved to share a few views on the issues.

Especially after President Jagdeo’s latest declarations on the early findings at the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and as a simple but powerful piece of cynicism and sarcasm contained in correspondence published in the Stabroek News of last Friday (18 April 08).

It is “natural”, the role of the formal political opposition, to monitor and scrutinise a government as it manages the resources, hopefully, in the interest of all citizens. But some opposition and related interest groups and individuals take it upon themselves to relentlessly – as the old slogan went – “Oppose, expose and depose”. In recent years, professional oppositionists here used the issue of corruption in high government places to highlight the alleged unsuitability of this administration.

I would often scoff at these attacks when they first crystallised. Because I was aware of cancerous corruption in the old days, amongst my erstwhile higher-up “comrades” in the powerful PNC, I considered allegations of corruption against the post-1992 PPP/C officials and their friends to be child’s play — and plays to deflect the wickedness of the PNC past to the new corridors of power and their inhabitants. Especially so that the new and current generation would believe that governmental mischief began with the PPP……