July 7, 2013 | By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon 

One of the things the people of this land and the international community must drive home to the PPP leadership is that they must investigate financial and moral depravities committed by people within their ranks because as it stands, Guyana is the only country where the government does not act against horrible wrongdoing by high-ranking politicians in power. No one can be that foolish to believe that venal behaviour among governmental leaders is confined to only a particular group of nations in the world. The average citizen from all parts of the globe, if they read their news, would know in the most democratic and powerful of nations, corruption and immoral behaviour among serving governmental leaders can be found. The great United States is no exception. Super-rich Japan is no exception. The democratic nations of the European Union are no exception. Guyana is perhaps the only State in the world where graphic and glaring skullduggery is committed by top serving politicians and party-aligned bureaucrats and there is absolutely no official inquiry. Jagdeo as President lashed out at corruption in the US involving spending for the Iraqi war. And he was right. What Jagdeo left out and deliberately so in order to avoid being exposed is that there have been umpteen congressional inquiries into misappropriations when they have been brought to the attention of Congress. Under Jagdeo’s twelve-year hegemony, there was only one probe into the alleged misconduct of a high official. I mentioned in my Friday column the inquiry into the Neermal Rekha affair. And the investigation further demonstrated the nastiness of power lustfulness in this country. I say most unambiguously that even in the most brutal dictatorship, a senior official who was found to have signed more than fifty bogus duty concession letters would have been sanctioned. Mr. Rekha was never charged or sanctioned or disciplined. He remains to this day in the same position of Secretary to the Treasury. Which leader in which country would have tolerated “Killaman”? He drifted from one sordid, abominable indiscretion to another and each time his reward was a higher post. Contrast our sister CARICOM country, Trinidad. Rekha and “Killaman” would have been consigned to the dustbin of politics if they had done in Trinidad what they were accused of in Guyana. In Trinidad, a Minister was sacked because a contract awarded by her Ministry was given to a company of which her husband was one of the managers. Comparing Guyana and Trinidad along a continuum of one to ten, Trinidad would get full marks while Guyana would get none. Each time the depraved ones in the corridors of power open their mouths in rebutting charges of corruption, they tell the nation that corruption exists all over the globe. They think the Guyanese people are fools. People know that the difference between the government of Guyana and other States is that the PPP leaders are shameless when it comes to not acting against the most vicious and horrible forms of financial illegalities committed within their own ranks. The ABC envoys in Guyana must have been sleeping since Mrs. Jagan handed the presidency to Mr. Jagdeo. And they have slept through the first eighteen months of Ramotar’s presidency. Something has awakened them the past month. They are now pointing to ubiquitous corruption in this land. It is as perennial as the grass, but they must have been taking their perennial naps so they couldn’t see it.Is that something the Ed Duran affair? Are the governments of America, Britain and Canada in possession of evidence that top politicians were involved in helping a US Embassy official to sell visas? Is this the type of evidence that has finally convinced them? I doubt it! The corruption jumbie stalks this country twenty-four hours every day. I believe the evidence we in the media community have, the envoys and officials in the IDB and World Bank know too. It is not only that corruption is graphic, blatant and pervasive; it is the scale of it that is simply mind-boggling. Billions and billions of dollars have been siphoned off. I met a prominent opposition-friendly lawyer in the National Park who said to me that there has to be some secret reason why the US has not acted against the PPP Government, because the corruption monster is so gargantuan that the US has to know. I suggested that he hazard a guess. His opinion is that the US Government made a deal with the PPP regime to be provided with intelligence data on Hugo Chavez in exchange for not pressuring the PPP on corruption. He may be right. But what is it that has caused them to wake up?