Corruption
Editorial
Stabroek News
July 1, 2004
In his column for Stabroek News on June 26, PPP/Civic Member of Parliament, Khemraj Ramjattan addressed the reports of corruption in government and other places. He said in part "there is no reasonable doubt in my mind now that there is massive corruption and irregularities in high places … Those whom I publicly lauded as being incorruptible have shamed me. I feel so guilty in being conned."
It might be easy to dismiss Mr Ramjattan's statements as the whistling of an expelled disaffected party member. However, there are indeed signs that corruption has become a problem at certain levels and how the government and its line investigators deal with it will say a lot.
Like governments across the board, the PPP/C has not been keen on having embarrassing trials involving functionaries who have been close to it or high-profile foreign-funded projects. So cases like the milk scam which ensnared an earlier PPP/C administration and related to a person with close ties to the party was met with a solid forward defensive shot and the deflection of bouncers and high lifting deliveries. The end result was that the matter simply died. A new government with oodles of local and international goodwill can get away with that especially if there is a belief that there is a firm policy against corruption and an intention to erect institutional moats against such crimes.
There were however other cases that sank unceremoniously though they were subject to investigation. The most infamous of these to date was the stone import scam that mushroomed from the Essequibo Coast Road project. From the evidence available this foreign-funded, much-delayed project had been compromised and the tentacles of this particular corruption had spread into the subject ministry. A dedicated attempt at gathering evidence and preserving the paper trail could certainly have landed some prosecutions. As with other cases, the investigation quietly died and certain key figures who were likely culpable melted away.
In another instance, an official of the Environmental Protection Agency was accused of soliciting a bribe from a private company. The official was dismissed. He should have been charged and put on trial. That act would have established clearly beyond a shadow of a doubt the anti-corruption credentials of the government. Not having done this sends a signal to functionaries across the board that there is a prospect that if you are caught at worst you'll lose your job but there is no real danger of prosecution.
And there have been other cases. The wildlife division seems particularly susceptible to corrupt influences as it had been under previous administrations and here again termination of employment has been the preferred action.
There are two instances this year that give rise to valid concerns especially in light of the view now that the government is unwilling to risk corruption trials because too much might be exposed and it might become tainted by the charge of graft. The first is the remigration scam - another activity that tends to attract malfeasance. The remigration scam cut across several ministries and pointed muscularly in the direction of a refined collusion and conspiracy to defraud the Treasury and enrich corrupt public servants. Yet, months after a high-level investigation was to have firmed up cases against the public servants who were clearly culpable in this matter nothing has happened.
Despite an ill-advised limited amnesty announced by the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), the public has not yet been properly advised about the results of the amnesty or why not a single charge has yet been proffered against anyone for anything. This quality of the investigation so far and the lack of results affirm in the public's mind that the preferred option is to let the furore die away and the culprits will simply fade away from the public eye. Such a course of action would be absolutely unacceptable and this newspaper intends to pursue this matter to finality. We urge the GRA and the police to expedite their investigations and to seek advice from the Chambers of the Director of Public Prosecutions to help build iron-clad cases.
Another worrying case is the reported unauthorised export of dolphins this year and the continued shenanigans within the Wildlife Unit. Even though the Wildlife Unit was brought under the Office of the President (OP), apparently to help root out graft, the irregularities continue and the head of the unit has now been sent home because of the allegations over wildlife exports from this country.
That these irregularities could be occurring in this agency under the direct purview of OP should cause alarm bells to ring. The mainly Stabroek Business reportage on the proposed dolphin trade indicated several worrying trends and we look forward to a detailed investigation of this matter.
It must be said that the concerns about corruption within government circles cannot be divorced from the much wider corrupting of society through the machinery of the drug trade, the death squad, `backtracking' etc. However, a beachhead has to be formed by the various sectors of society from which an all-out battle can be waged against the hydra-headed corruption. How the government and its enforcement arms handle the current remigration scam, in particular, will say a lot about what role they intend to play.