Dear Editor,
More and more the reports are surfacing, and more and more those same verbal reports are corroborated by an accumulating mound of damning records. It is a record of tangible illuminating evidence.
The reports and records damn meritocracy; worse yet, they damn integrity. Some of the people recruited for positions ‒ some sensitive, some a shade above the ordinary, and some meaningful ‒ come with considerable baggage. In some instances, the baggage is old and well-known; they are not secret, they cannot be hidden. They include either prior financial improprieties, or chronic financial deficits. In terms of the latter, it is that they are always short, and should not be trusted near receipts, invoices, and cash, including the petty. Further, there is a trail of questionable relationships, and questionable conduct steeped in the immoral. Even further, there are persuasive track records that point to less than acceptable performance in previous working gigs.
Yet these same suspect persons are now here and there, and increasingly everywhere. Their claim to fame and presence is limited to two core elements. The first is that they are good at (and recognized for) carrying the party flag; and second they are given a pass through employment rebirth, notwithstanding historical baggage.
Thus, today, the same ethical failures are installed as the new facilitators by already established enablers. As before, the losers of yesterday are repositioned to be the devastators of now and later. This is just another episode in the unspeakably sickening déjà vu of this country’s endless journey to find itself. With people like these, it invariably finds itself in areas that are dark, dreary, and deformed. And this is because decisions are made in favour of dishonourable dunces by sometimes political dunces, too. Therein stands the revolving door of a half century’s worth of the paramountcy of fools, frauds, and the felonious (in any other jurisdiction), without interruption, without regret, and without qualm.
In the interim, the other political dunces linger outside the banquet hall of spoils waiting a turn at return, in spite of a mountain of unaddressed dirty baggage of their own. In Guyana, to restate the unchallengeable, politics is all about the Powerball of the financial roundup and the financial cleanup. It is a nice living, especially given it is other people’s money.
Last, amidst all the ugly, careless personnel selections and decisions by an aging government (it went from infancy straight to old age, bypassing every intermediate rung in between), there is one whose image and substance has taken a beating. That would be none other than the Head of State. Regardless of which CEO, minister, or other ranking comrade did the foul hiring (or firing) deed, the President is diminished. His political adversary was repeatedly called on the carpet for questionable people in his own fold during his time. The result was a sound cursing of the messengers and objectors.
Now, though the posture, presence and perspicacity of the incumbent are different, President Granger should be acutely aware of the steady dissonance that led to where he is today. That dissonance starts and solidifies with the kind of people (at all levels) that are part of the cast that accompanies the chief. Like yesterday, many of the secondary presences and bit players are neither about country nor comrades nor contributions. Instead, they are about cash, and all that is coarse and corrupt. In the thin race-based algorithms of electoral contests in this country, the President should also be familiar with one more thing: it is not about who teef the longest and the most; it is about who teef last, and who did nothing about it. A forewarning is respectfully tendered. It is expected that one’s own people will be favoured almost always; let it at least be clean ones. There has to be more than a few in the midst.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
