Dear Editor
THE media will be dominated by discussions on Budget 2017 for the next few weeks. I myself will refrain from making meaningful comment, but return focus to the dire need to raise income levels for the masses, so that Guyanese can afford to acquire their own homes and provide for their families without being treated as welfare cases by the state.

I first wish to draw attention to the structure of our society and the massive social injustices and abuses meted out to the Guyanese masses. Societies have tended to be divided into the working class and the ruling class, or elites. I borrow this reference, but also propose to refine the ruling class or elites into what I refer to as ‘the system’. ‘The system’ includes wealthy business owners and their privileged directors, executive managers and similarly designated figures, and the upper level of government bureaucracy, which includes the ministers, their advisors and senior managers, and the justice system. The system also includes those lawyers and their agents who collude with the justice system to pervert the course of justice.

This classification facilitates a clearer distinction of the masses of workers and other powerless individuals on the one hand, and the system, or the people who are in control, on the other. Within this context, it is easier to see that the masses are at the mercy of the system, which uses its laws and regulations to keep the masses in check, while the people within the system, notably government ministers, wealthy business owners and their acolytes, are free from the law and the course of justice.

Integral to the system’s control mechanism are the media and other mass communication which it uses to control the minds of the masses with propaganda and platitudes for the injustices suffered by the masses. Some of the great injustices and abuses meted out by the system against the Guyanese masses have been those perpetrated in our court system. Our Guyanese youth, many of whom have been robbed of an education along with the opportunity to acquire a regular job, who have also been robbed by their employers because of their inability to reason and count, occasionally find themselves on the other side of the law as they resort to alternative means of surviving. Caught up in the criminal justice system without the financial resources to fund a pleading of their cases, they are occasionally left to languish in jail for inordinate amounts of time.

An examination of instances of those who belong to the system who commit crimes reveals that these persons make bail, and their lawyers and the legal system collude to drag out their cases almost indefinitely, on occasion jacking the court system to tamper with evidence, which ultimately results either in the case being thrown out or some similar version of events. A fascinating example has been the recent case of a former minister and her subordinate who were recently found criminally liable for the alleged misappropriation and unaccountability, read theft, of in excess of $600 million of taxpayers’ money.

The former minister’s case has been postponed on a number of occasions, but on one of those occasions, one of the lawyers for the prosecution told the judge that he could not find the page with the evidence/charges against the defendant. This was not a case of the prosecution being stupid, but evidence of the possibility that the court system has been bought. Similar cases have occurred in the past, and will continue to occur, as it is clear that the people in the system can steal and commit crimes and pay their lawyers and the courts to subvert the justice system.

With regard to injustices committed against the Guyanese masses by the justice system in particular, while I do not condone the use of marijuana, or cannabis, some advanced countries have recognised the plant for its medicinal purposes, and have moved to decriminalise its use completely. What is clear is that the use or personal consumption of marijuana within the context of new knowledge cannot be construed in any way, manner or form as a criminal act. In this regard, I submit that the justice system pursue avenues to have individuals incarcerated for the possession of the plant for personal consumption be immediately released from confinement.

I am personally suspicious of the benefits of marijuana for other than medicinal purposes, as I am sure are other concerned members of society , so it is recommended that the release of the aforementioned persons be also accompanied by a nationwide education campaign warning against the consumption of marijuana for other than medicinal purposes, in a manner similar to the treatment of cigarettes.

Perhaps the greatest abuses perpetrated against our Guyanese masses have however been their impoverishment and the subjection to the brutal system of injustice that has accompanied it. The dismal failures of successive governments have rendered the masses poor, and in many instances, uneducated. This combination of factors has yielded a society where many have little scope for opportunity to live a normal life that includes a well-paying job and raising educated children who can survive in tomorrow’s world.
Our governments have acknowledged the massive impoverishment suffered through Guyana’s structural adjustment policies of the late 80s and early 90s.

Even after benefitting from higher tax revenues, particularly VAT, these governments have continuously dreamed up massive capital expenditure projects, for which they also have had to borrow in many instances, to pan off to their friends and cronies in the private sector, enriching themselves through corruption while laying bare their bosom with the lie that the government doesn’t have any money, or the government can’t find any money to pay them. A quick check over the years will reveal that literally hundreds of billions (not millions) of dollars in taxpayers’ money, including foreign loans which Guyanese will have to repay, have been spent on capital projects.

The questions here are: Where are the jobs? Where are the higher incomes Where is the improved social welfare? Why do our civil servants, from our police who are entrusted to enforce justice, to other members of the public service, have to resort to soliciting bribes in order to survive? Why do many of our womenfolk have to engage in promiscuous activities to support themselves and their families? Are Guyanese better off for the expenditure of all of these hundreds of billions of dollars?

The billions of dollars lost to corruption and cronyism could in fact have been used to engineer a stronger macroeconomic framework that would have supported government paying increased salaries to public servants to lift incomes and expenditures in the economy. Contributing to all of this has been our very own private sector, from financial and other service companies to mining, manufacturing and commercial/retail companies.

These business organisations have fed off the social chaos precipitated by our governments, and systematically engorged themselves on profit of the labour of the masses, underpaying workers, which translates as robbing them of their fair pay, share in the benefits of their labour, and the opportunity to look after their children and prepare them for tomorrow’s world.

After the collapse of our economy in the 1980s, these businesses, taking advantage of the prevailing massive levels of unemployment that still exist even today, have consistently and unjustly underpaid their workers when they were more than capable of compensating them their just due. Notable examples of these companies include to those household names which make several hundreds of millions of dollars in profits alone on an annual basis.

These very same businesses who today portray themselves as paragons for a better world, have in fact helped to maintain Guyanese in a state of poverty and contributed to many instances of social decay, from ill-health, to poor education, to the resulting crime and increasing erosion of social values that we witness today, which seems to be catapulting many of our children back into the dark ages of ignorance. These businesses, along with our successive governments, have contributed to what I call the Arrested Development of our society.

In light of the problems identified, some obvious recommendations come to mind:
1. The Ministry of Legal Affairs should collaborate with the Guyana Police Force to establish a unit with specific responsibilities for policing the justice system to identify and disbar those lawyers engaged in bribing the courts and also address those employed by the justice system who aid and abet the corruption of the courts.

2. The workers who have been robbed by their employers need to decide how to approach recouping their lost benefits. Further, private employers need to adopt the socially responsible position of paying workers their fair wages and ensure that their NIS benefits are properly remunerated. The target on fair wages should start at $130,000 per month for the lowest paid worker.

3. Government needs to re-examine the effectiveness of its capital expenditure programmes, both in quantity and quality, and in terms of the benefits that are expected to accrue to society. Secondly, it is incumbent upon government to correct past failures by adopting policies that facilitate a proactive stance on raising the ordinary Guyanese out of the systemic poverty that resulted from the adoption of the earlier mentioned structural adjustment policies. Increases in salaries can be easily and effectively managed so as to mitigate their impact on prices. It should also be noted that this will assist in eliminating systemic corruption, which will go a long way to marketing Guyana as a destination for both foreign investment and tourism.

Regards
Craig Sylvester