AFC column – The face of corruption
This past week a Mission from the Organisation of American States (OAS) would have been in Guyana gathering opinions, possibly data, and generally looking into corruption in Guyana as well as following up Guyana’s implementation of the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption. The importance of such as visit must be taken in the context of the real impact of corruption. Corruption can take many forms and includes fraud, embezzlement and bribery and these are all closely related. While in the past corruption may have been seen as a transaction between the corrupter and the corrupted, it is now realised that other persons suffer as a result of corrupt transaction and those persons are usually the poor, vulnerable and innocent. Corruption can damage an entire economy and widen the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. When incompetent and inept contractors are awarded billion-dollar contracts because they can bribe public officials, the cost goes beyond substandard work:
1- Additional money has to be found to fix the substandard work.
2- Where the original money was obtained from an international financial institution there is the matter of repayment.
3- To cover these additional costs, the government must slice into the national pie and it is here that the burden on the ‘have nots’ becomes heavier.
Every dollar that is taken to fix a substandard project means one dollar less for an essential public service such as education or health and it is the poor and vulnerable who have the greatest need for these services, as they lack the financial resources to access similar private services. Multiply this by the billions we see wasted on substandard projects all across the country and we begin to understand not only the magnitude of the corruption, but also why so many thousands of ordinary Guyanese are disenchanted (if they ever were not) with this government. But it is not only the poor who are at the losing end in a corrupt society, the ‘corrupter’ also finds himself in a vulnerable position. As soon as he pays, he begins to lose control. If he does not get what he paid for he is in no position to complain, and having broken the law, he is vulnerable to blackmail. If he tries to break the corrupt relationship he may face a variety of threats, including the threat of violence, no more contracts, loss of ‘favoured’ status and quite possibly, victimisation. Corruption in not a face-less crime, it infringes on our fundamental right to fair treatment. When a person or a company can bribe a public official they become a ‘favoured’ entity, resulting in decision-making being biased in their favour to the detriment of the person who cannot afford to pay a bribe. There again we see the widening gap between the rich and the poor. The mix of politics and business can create the perfect breeding ground for corruption. Where we find a government breaking the rules in favour of a business entity; for example where a business is granted concessions not provided for by existing law and that government subsequently amends the law to accommodate its illegal act, that business would have to repay the favour by writing big campaign financing cheques in favour of the government. When that ‘unholy alliance’ created through state-sponsored illegality is fed and allowed to flourish by laundering off chunks of donor funds or tax dollars into private purses; for example where an item is procured for five or ten times its cost on the open market, such actions feed into the cesspool of corruption and legitimate companies operating on the right side of the law are forced out of business. Guyana has been ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the Region and with good reason. It is accepted globally that the process of public procurement gives wide scope for corruption, through paying bribes to secure contracts, over-priced contracts, insider dealing, claiming payment for goods which have not been delivered and such. However, despite having the necessary Constitutional provisions to minimise the opportunity for corruption in public procurement, the Guyana government refuses to enact the provisions, thereby leaving the door open for continued corruption such as can be engaged in through an ‘unholy alliance’.