IN recent years, the political opposition has launched a corruption crusade against the government, supported by some sections of the media making all sorts of unfounded and spurious allegations and charges, clearly aimed at tarnishing the image of public officials and the government.
What is disgusting about these allegations of corruption is that they are not substantiated by any evidence, are therefore baseless, and are being used only for cheap politicking.
One opposition party which has been vociferous in its corruption charges against the government is currently embroiled in an internal corruption fiasco which could become a scandal of immense proportions. One member of that party has written and spoken publicly of another member making attempts to retrieve money from the party which he purportedly spent from his pocket without producing supporting documents to prove that he actually spent the sum of money amounting to some $4.5M.
The leader of that party, instead of dealing with the matter in a procedural manner, actually berated the member who came out in public about the alleged irregularity, asking how much he contributed to the party’s election campaign. So the leader of this opposition party, apparently, is against government corruption but is supportive of corruption within his own party. It is most ludicrous that one would be against corruption in the government but condone corruption within his own party. In fact, the party has been extremely silent on the charge of corruption by one of its members. As the old adage tells us: ‘what is good for the goose must be good for the gander’, so corruption cannot be good within the party but bad at the governmental level.
These are the sort of double standards that characterise the political opposition in Guyana.
Only recently, they spoke of creating employment and protecting workers rights, but in the same breath engineered budget cuts which put workers on the breadline.
Against this backdrop of corruption allegations against the government, it would be interesting to see how the political opposition would respond to the motion tabled in the House calling for it to become mandatory for all Members of Parliament to declare their annual assets and earnings to the Integrity Commission.
This will be an acid test to determine whether the political opposition is really serious about stamping out corruption, as the government’s motion is clearly one aimed at exposing possible corruption.
Perhaps, had it not been for the court action resorted to by the former Leader of the Opposition, this motion would have already become law and therefore mandatory.
The motion is a very pertinent and appropriate one as it seeks to have the President disclose to the Speaker, annually, the names of those Members of Parliament who are not in compliance.
When the motion comes before the House we will know definitely who are serious about stamping out corruption.