I WISH to reply to a letter published (in the Stabroek News on 11/12/2012) and authored by Mr. Christopher Ram.  This letter purports to respond to some views I expressed in the Stabroek News on  December 8, 2012 on certain disclosures made by Transparency International.I must first confess that I was overwhelmed by the vile language and viperous tone in which this letter was written.  It is clear that Mr. Ram has shifted his personal vendetta from Dr. Ashni Singh and his wife to me and my colleague, Cde. Gail Teixeira. In an exchange of letters in the press some time ago in respect of a different matter, Mr. Ram had launched a similarly diabolical and vengeful tirade against me. What I said then remains most apt: “To these ad hominem remarks I shall not respond and to those venomous levels I refuse to descend.  I prefer to predicate my public exchanges on more rational, civil and mature foundations.”  I now turn to the issues raised by Mr. Ram in his letter.
A distillation of the circumlocutory argumentation of Mr. Ram, stripped of their vitriolic content, yield the following propositions:

1. that the Transparency International Report is grounded upon some empirical data; and

2. that “corruption” is defined by Transparency  International “lexicon as a misuse of public office for private gains,” and presumably, their assessment is therefore confined to public office and public office holders.

These assertions are, at best, palpably wrong and at worse, hopelessly tenuous.    

Firstly, it is axiomatic that Transparency International’s methodology is a perception-driven process and not one premised upon empirical evidence.  The report itself, by its own title, unwittingly admits to this reality, as it is styled a “Perception Index Report”.   No amount of clumsy ranting and raving can change that methodological fact.

Secondly, a process which seeks to diagnose the level of corruption in a society but confines its assessment only to the public sector, is one that is both woefully myopic and deeply flawed. Using the definition coined by Transparency International, the reality is that in any society, the other half of a corrupt transaction is, invariably, extrinsic of the public sector.  In other words, the private gain which flows from the misuse of the public office, largely, emanates from outside of and not within the public sector.

Therefore, when Transparency International ranks Guyana as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, it condemns the entire state apparatus, including, the Executive, the Judiciary and the Legislature, the private sector and the entire citizenry, as corrupt.  It does so, not upon empirical, verifiable evidence, but upon the perception of people who neither work nor reside in Guyana and who are virtually unknown to us; and via a process which offers none an opportunity to utter a single word in our defence.

It is this unjust damnation of an entire nation by an inscrutable process with which I take severe umbrage.  No amount of invectives will shift me from this position of principle.