THOSE WHO CONDEMN THE PAST ARE BOUND TO REPEAT IT

September 19, 2014, By KNews, Filed Under Features/Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source - Kaieteur News

It is hard for anyone born after 1992 to imagine how it was that at one stage, the shelves in Guyana were literally empty of imported items. Today when you go into any supermarket and see the shelves packed with as  diverse a range of imported goods imaginable, you have to ask yourselves how it was that this country ever reached the stage whereby importers were not able to import goods because there was no foreign exchange for them to do so.

In order to understand how the economy was bankrupted, it is necessary to understand the degree of incompetence that reined during that period. In order to appreciate how this incompetence developed, one has to acknowledge that there were many square pegs in round holes. And in order to fathom how these square pegs got appointed, it is necessary to understand the politicization of the public bureaucracy.

As part of this politicization, bureaucrats were required to be submissive to the political oligarchs of the day. Unless you were a top member of the ruling politburo, when even an uneducated and ignorant underling flashed a party card, you, the bureaucrat, trembled with fear. This is the extent to which the system became corrupt.

Corruption was institutionalized because public officials were forced to submit to political diktat. They were forced to take actions which went against their professional judgment. They were forced to engage in actions which went against this dignity such as being forced to participate in circuses such as the Peoples Parade or going to work on Burnham’s plantation at Hope. As a result of this political perversion, corruption became part of the very core of the system. It was institutionalized.

By ignoring the institutionalized feature of corruption, the PPP when it came to power repeated the mistakes of the PNC. The PPPC believed that now that it was in power it could have reformed this state and rooted out corruption. It was wrong. State organizations in which corruption is institutionalized, to the extent of what existed under the PNC, cannot not be reformed. They needed to be dismantled and rebuilt. This was the mistake that the PPP made. It assumed that now that it had power and its operatives were moving into the upper echelons of the public bureaucracy, that they would perform better than the PNC did and remove corruption.

The PPP failed to appreciate that the corruption was systemic and that merely changing figureheads would not root out corruption. It has not done so. And neither has it prevented the politicization of public bureaucracy.

Parties such as the Alliance for Change believe that the best way to deal with corruption in the tendering for public works contracts is to have a Public Procurement Commission. The AFC, too, is repeating the mistakes of the past. Its priority should not be about a Public Procurement Commission but rather about insulating the public bureaucracy from political perversion.

When it comes to the perversion of the public bureaucracy, two obscene features have developed under the PPP. The first of these is the use of public office by certain political figures to pursue vendettas against their enemies.

There are unquestionable cases of persons using their high office and the resources of the State to go after individuals with whom they have grouses. In some instances they have conscripted family members in other parts of government to go after persons with whom they have issues.

There has also been the practice of pursuing the interests of their clients while in office. This is totally unacceptable. It represents an abuse of public office, which was one of the things that allowed corruption to become rampant under the PNC, since persons were afraid to speak out against these excesses for fear of being victimized.

The second perversion is the conscripting of public officials to go after political enemies and those who are seen as against the government. These officials are pressured into being unprofessional and to be used as tools for settling political scores and personal slights. This too is totally unacceptable and it is time that there be a massive campaign launched by civil society to demand the resignation of those public officials who allow themselves to become political battering rams.

Both of these cancers, the use of public office by political figures to pursue private vendettas and the conscripting of public officials to do the dirty work of politicians must be rooted out. The only way for this to happen is to remove those concerned because like institutionalized corruption, they cannot be reformed overnight.

Source - http://www.kaieteurnewsonline....-bound-to-repeat-it/