HENRY Jeffrey’s column on “Corruption” in Stabroek News dated December 19 inspired me to cogitate on this vexed issue in recent times, more particularly as it appears to have made the government the whipping boy by all and sundry, including some with an axe to grind.

Society was tainted from the moment Adam corruptly picked the forbidden fruit in the full presence of Eve, making her privy to that act of unjust enrichment.
However, society has evolved and corruption has taken on a protean form. As a concept, corruption transcends the mere identification with an accumulation of wealth in money/resources not based “upon justiciable evidence.” The acquisition of power by an individual by relinquishing a cause or ideology destined to keep him/her on a peripheral trajectory, after being made an offer too attractive to be refused, is just one such extended conceptual example. In  doing so, this recognises that the beneficiary becomes entitled to a position of pre-eminence which he/she would otherwise not have earned/merited “based upon justiciable evidence” in the electoral contest traditionally experienced.
Encyclopaedic support for this view is readily available from the various lexicons, etymological, political and otherwise, since the brush of turpitude extends beyond the artist’s more measured strokes of precision. A more astute observer, in all probability, is permitted therefore, to compare the largesse to which the beneficiary becomes entitled with his/her hitherto more likely limited resource base, as the source for his conclusion.
The corridors of power have accommodated, if not bred or enticed (as in the case of Adam) a more malleable cadre of inordinately diffused ideologues and fellow administrators, glued together solely by ambitious self-improvement and the lucre of governorship. In other words, corruption is not to be seen as limited to an economic bank account but the political bank book from which its influence may be more meaningful and attractive to some, if not all. Fame and fortune are not always inseparable twins, but individually and together, they are envious attainments, by foul or fair means.
My perspective is that decision-making, tainted or infected with hope or promise or expectation of reward hitherto inaccessible had the espousal of principle quondam been maintained, can be equated with that sense of depravity consistent with the perception or notion of corruption. Could it be successfully argued that corruption, structural or otherwise, only commenced or raise its ugly head after a beneficiary of a regime (during which four Presidents gave expression to their disparate visions) swam in the nectar of power over a period of 18 years? Does this form of corruption meet the criterion of “justiciable evidence” or the requisite higher standard of probative evidence to justify a self-conviction?