The politics of public service
LAST WEEK, I wrote on my experience as part of a recently formed group of professionals called ‘Friends of Donald Ramotar’. While I have not received much direct feedback on people’s views of that article, I know for certain that it has raised a few eyebrows in many quarters and confirming what others had ‘long suspected’.

I work with the government of Guyana, and I am well aware that the roles of public officers, particularly ones who support the incumbent in any open way – like being part of a group called ‘Friends of Donald Ramotar’ for example – are increasingly under scrutiny and interrogation.
Now, I am not saying that there has been no instance where a public officer has not been put under pressure to perform some duty or task that can be considered ethically suspect. I can probably even allow that there may be some people in the public service who seem to have particularly unpalatable actions as part of their job description.
What I can say is that as a competent public service professional – with considerable experience in donor community work – I have never in my eight years of working under this administration been subject to duress to do anything that I did not want to do, nor felt was linked to political expedience.
Again, I’m not saying that we live in a society devoid of political hacks, but that I’ve never had to compromise my professional integrity in furtherance of some partisan goal, narrow or broad. Nor have I felt that I have been discriminated against because of my apparent racial background.
To deny someone a position on the basis of their ethnicity is abhorrent and I openly condemn every single instance in which it occurs. Almost equally abhorrent, however, is the automatic labelling of – and let’s call a spade a spade here – any notable person of African descent working with the government as a lackey or house slave or criticised  by the opposition as an “opportunist”.
I know first hand of several cases where Afro-Guyanese have been offered good positions in government but have declined because of that fear of being labelled a house slave.
The people who engage in this sort of behaviour rarely comprehend how utterly illogical and arrogant and ultimately self-defeating this is. By condemning and discouraging qualified people who want to take up public jobs in the interest of serving the country, you actually contribute to the problem in two ways.
First of all, if it is that you are supposedly that interested in the advancement of your ‘supposed’ race, why discourage them as individuals from enhancing their professional capacity. And if you are supposedly championing national development, why deny the national pool of professional skills the benefit of skilled labour?
It would stand to reason that if you are putting country first, you would support skilled people being offered placement in the public service in the furtherance of national development.
To take this analogy even further, let’s for the sake of argument take it for granted that the racial battle lines are drawn and one side is dominating the public sector. In that case, from a strategic point of view, every job opportunity that is offered someone supposedly on your side is like your supposed opponent willingly opening the door for the “Trojan Horse”. Why not take advantage of that?
The reason is, we have gotten so bogged down in our tribalism that even our already misguided prejudices have become even more blinding to the point that they have become naturally self-defeating.
Of course, all that is conjecture is ultimately irrelevant in the larger picture. What we need to start working on as a nation is a system in which the criteria and preconditions for placement are even clearer and more transparent so that discrimination of either kind – discrimination of exclusion, and discrimination of condemnation – cannot occur whether on the grounds of ethnicity, religion or political affiliation.
Simply and beautifully put. What we cannot afford to lose during these elections is the perspective that at some fundamental level the vast majority of us are in our own ways striving for a better Guyana, and we all have multiple paths by which we can seek to achieve that goal. Discrimination of any kind has no place in our path there.

(This column first appeared in last Sunday’s issue of the Chronicle. Today it is repeated, by popular request)