The elephant sits comfortably
January 7, 2015 | By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source - Kaieteur News
The “criminalized economy” and the “criminalized state” labels may boomerang against those who have coined them to describe the economy and State of Guyana. Those who have concocted these dubious labels may regret making them if they ever manage to grasp political power.
In today’s column I will explain why the labels of a “criminalized State and a criminalized economy are dangerous, even to those who concocted these terms to describe Guyana.
It is dangerous for two main reasons; the first being that such labels reflect a mis-analysis of the state of the affairs of Guyana and therefore misses the elephant in the room. The second is that they invite certain dangerous policy responses that could destroy the country, once again.
If Guyana is a criminalized State and this criminalized State is administered by the PPPC, then any opposition parties that take power will have no other option, if they accept the fact that the State is criminalized, than to dismantle the State.
If the State is criminalized, then reform is out of the question. It is impossible to reform a criminalized State. As such there will be only one solution left to the opposition parties that support this argument of the existence of a criminalized State. That option would be to dismantle the entire State machinery.
It would be a tragedy, once again, for Guyana to dismantle the State machinery. The institutions of the State are far from perfect, but they are in far better shape today, in terms of infrastructure and capacity, than at any other time in Guyana.
Billions of dollars have been sunk into improving these institutions and if they are deemed to be part of a criminalized State, then their dismantling would mean that all these investments would be swiped clean.
That would be a tragedy in itself, since recreating institutions takes a very long time and is extremely costly. The dismantling of the criminalized State would have to involve dismantling institutions and recreating them.
We have been down this road before. The recreating of state institutions under the cooperative socialist experiment destroyed private enterprise in Guyana. Guyana has never recovered from this experiment.
The private sector in this country was decimated under Burnham. He brought the commanding heights of the economy under State control. Burnham could have stopped there but he did not.
He destroyed the private sector in this country. It must be recalled that when the External Trade Bureau (ETB) was established, the foreign exchange crisis was not acute as it later became.
But this Bureau, a re-creation of the functions of what a trade ministry should do, decided who got licences and who did not.
In other words, the ETB had the power to decide which businesses had a lifeline and which did not. In this way, Burnham determined the fate of private businesses in Guyana.
He could have stopped there also, but he did not. He was intent to remove any class threat to his rule, and so he went after sections of the landed class, seizing their estates and properties and compensating them at 1939 valuations.
All of this was done in the name of re-creating the institutions of the State to serve in the process of creating the new Guyanese man and woman.
And this is the danger inherent in any attempts at recreating State institutions. That danger goes beyond the perversion and destruction of institutions. It can destroy that which has taken a long time to build.
The second danger of the label of a criminalized State is that it is a based on a false analysis that creates a blind spot, one that forces you to stare at the elephant in the room and not see it.
The real problem of the economy of Guyana is not that it is either criminalized or part of a criminalized State.
The real problem is that there exists an economic oligarchy that is directing the course of development in the country as a self-serving enterprise.
This oligarchy comprises a clique of super-rich in this country that is at the source of the problems of income distribution in the country. They are elephant in the room.
Instead of seeing this huge elephant that is sitting comfortably in the room, those who advance the notion of a criminalized economy and a criminalized State will end up inviting policy responses that avoid zeroing in on the perfidious elements of the oligarchic class.
What is needed is not a dismantling, indeed not even a reform of the State or economy. What is needed in Guyana is the excising of this self-serving class. Unfortunately, the idea of there being a criminalized State could have the opposite effect. It could allow the elephant to continue to sit comfortably, and who knows, even to co-opt the new government just as they have done to the PPPC.
