Dear Editor,
The recently released Pandora Papers is but the latest example of political leaders and their surrounding inner circle of public servants taking advantage of the trust placed in them. It is of hopes that things will be different, only for them to return to the same degrading places over and over again.
I am still trying to wrap my mind and arms around Mr. and Mrs. Blair formerly of 10 Downing Street heights. If he (they) could be so selfish and craven, then none is immune from the temptations to make matters occur a certain way that favors monetarily. This is totally unexpected, and leaves in a bad place. There is no vaccine to inoculate against such a virus that inserts greed and a lack of prudence, intellect, and character in such sordid situations. This has to come from within, from our hard upbringing, our rigid contexts and teachings, and our own commitment to be about what resists, time and again, the rich side benefits of office, the gauzy attractions of the flesh, and other temptations. If Tony Blair could have been so low for savings of 312,000 quid, then I am forced to settle for the same, or multiples of that, across the span of Third World leaders, from yesterday and today. To think that in a society as advanced and watchful, with all manner of checks and balances, as Great Britain that this could happen, opens the door to where else and with whom else that it cannot. In other words, there is no place and no leader that is now able to pass muster, to be given the benefit of the doubt. They have to prove it and earn it, and that is my position.
Editor, my position on most Guyana’s political leaders and more than enough public service presences does not need any repeating. Let it be sufficient to say that it is near zero in terms of their integrity, credibility, and decency. I regret that I find myself in this place, cannot be about anything that is different. Because, as I have said before, leaders across the globe work hard to ensure that they present the right words and faces before either an adoring public, or uncaring ones. They succeed, sometimes for long stretches of time, because they become so good at the hypocrisies and outright deceptions. In Guyana, leadership corruptions are now ringed by carefully laid out compartments that insulate leaders from what the perceptive can see through, and appreciate the costly devastations being wrecked upon a nation that has largely lost both moral compass and the steadying anchorage of a powerful body of ethics, which is adhered to, because it is held in high esteem. Today, the world is visited by the Pandora Papers, and what a box it is. In the near future, Guyana could officially become part of the universal disclosures with its own version of that, and to which I label from now the Prado Papers.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
