SWEDISH DJ Avicii mysteriously passed away last week and I think his death in a strange way provides a good analogy to the change in the national attitude to corruption. Only 28 at his death, Avicii’s work pioneered modern party music and he himself was a notorious party addict, with songs even being written about the very experience of hanging out with him. Avicii gave up his hard-partying ways in 2016, however, after severe pancreatic illness, which he blamed on excessive drinking.

Now the world waits for the details of his death, the question lingering of whether a return to his wild ways led to his demise. In a way, the corruption previously rife in Guyanese society was like a country-wide party. Rules are few in such an environment, and rewards are easy. But parties are always only temporary, and they must all come to some final conclusion. Our challenge is to avoid an end like Avicii’s, to avoid becoming so engulfed in chaos that despite our best efforts at recovery we sink back to our old ways.

The building out of anti-corruption institutions and the broader attitude against corruption so hotly debated in the past few weeks should not be seen as a witch- hunt, because that misunderstands the true task. Guyana is trying to recover from the international perception of corruption brought on by a lack of compliance with international conventions and standards. I don’t want to linger on what was not done, because enough blame has been articulated at length.

But I want instead to remind that the urgency of change remains constant. Avicii seems to have turned back too late, and we must not follow that path. Without institutions to fight corruption, matched by enforcement of our existing laws, it is easy to imagine how quickly oil resources would be, shall we say “distributed” into the hands of a lucky few. And for all our wealth we would be poor, another opportunity to turn our country around squandered.
On the other side of the coin, what Guyana’s alleged history of corruption (especially at senior levels of government) says to me is that there must be some disconnect in the way individuals or companies look to influence an administration. There is a significant difference between businesspeople giving a political party funding to advocate for a greater number of construction projects in the budget, and them donating money so that they can secure contracts exclusively.

The first is legitimate, as they are fighting for policies they think will both benefit themselves and the country as a whole, whereas the second is a classic example of corruption. I think, because our politics is only now becoming truly issue-based, Guyanese assume that the second situation is always the case, and as a result are suspicious of any businessperson who makes political contributions of any kind. Needless to say, this approach should change in step with our politics, as businesspeople should not be victimised because of inaccurate perceptions.

This leads us perhaps to ask about campaign finance reform, as making finance transparent and rule-based is critical to maintaining the integrity of our democracy. After all, as much as we have a domestic question being asked around corruption, how much greater must our worry be when huge amounts of international funding are involved? Shifting towards issue-based campaigning and issue-based, transparent campaign contributions will mitigate much of both actual corruption and the public perception of it, as civil society organisations have often advocated.

I’ll leave you with a quote from that famous Roman emperor Augustus, who established the first police force, that seems to best describe the current struggle against corruption: “What is done well is done quickly enough.” All of the anti-corruption efforts now being undertaken serve not to target individuals or groups, but to build a broad institutional foundation Guyana cannot realistically live without. And while it may come a bit slowly, the goal continues to be that it be done well.