Corruption has become endemic in Guyanese society and unless reforms to tackle the scourge are undertaken, what is happening now will be child’s play compared to when revenues from oil arrive and the corresponding increase in public spending occurs, political analyst Ralph Ramkarran has warned.
“Having been integrated as part of our public life, corruption is now difficult to uproot and eradicate. It feeds on the culture, availability of opportunities and weak systems,” he wrote in his Conversation Tree column in the Sunday Stabroek.
“In a short while, Guyana will experience an increase in public spending, facilitated by an increase in income that will dwarf that which occurred in the 1980s to the 1990s, which facilitated a vast increase in corruption. Unless political and legislative reforms are carried out now, what is currently going on will be child’s play,” the former two-term Speaker of the National Assembly warned. Ramkarran, a member of the PPP for nearly 50 years, quit it in 2012 after calling out the party on matters of corruption. He had said that corruption was pervasive and the then PPP government needed to do something about it. The PPP’s hierarchy blasted him for his stance which he did not resile from and instead chose to resign. A few months ago, he co-founded the A New and United Guyana political party.
