Dear Editor
I MUST challenge Ralph Ramkarran’s highly misleading contention in his Sunday Stabroek column of April 14, “Corruption has now become endemic”, which seeks to convey the understanding that the cancer of corruption became of age, or became a fact, in the post-2015 period.

This article is wholly mischievous, and without foundation, since Ramkarran was able to remind readers as to the reason why he had been abused by senior PPP/C members, and eventually kicked out after a lifetime of membership and service to the party, in 2012. The fact that he took a determined stance against a monster that had been nurtured and allowed to grow into gargantuan proportions, which he knew would have caused him to collide with the hard-nosed members of the PPP/C executive, was because he saw the great moral and material damage that its destructive, shameless, and unconscionable actions had been exacting on the people and country of Guyana. For this brave stance, he must be applauded; except that his confrontation with his party was because of a monster that had been running amok, prior to 2015.

However, one must remind Ramkarran of this fact: That the Burnham PNC, while in government, had taken stringent actions against corrupt officials, to the extent that a special fraud court headed by the late justice Ramraj Jagnandan, had presided over as senior magistrate to prosecute those accused of corrupt practices.

This action by the Burnham government was not mere window dressing or pretence. It resulted in the following convictions: conviction of a former GNCB legal advisor for fraudulent conversion, jailed for 18 months; the imprisonment of a former GUYSTAC high functionary and permanent secretary for his part in the $7.6M Ministry of Trade conspiracy fraud that involved a former well-known businessperson; imprisonment also for a former general manager of the Transport and Harbours Dept; and the indictment of the then Head of the Re-migrant Scheme. These are just some of the corruption cases which are recalled at this time.

Compare, even these few examples, to the PPP/C’s declared intention in 1992 of combatting corruption, and one will realise that its government never even bothered to lift a finger against this criminality which it allowed to become central to the criminalised state during its 23 years in office. It was a free-for-all, as evidenced by the many audit reports which exposed the naked plunder in all forms of the nation’s financial and other related assets.

Editor, though one will also give due recognition for the updating of seven years of the Auditor General’s report, even that did not act as a catalyst for further state vigilance, as evidenced by the numerous instances of red flags being raised during the subsequent 23 years of PPP/C governance. It was cronyism in all forms, with nepotism becoming the order of the day, especially without the presence of a National Procurement Commission, which was finally established by the current administration.

It took a new government– the coalition A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC)– that inherited a morass and a quagmire of PPP/C state criminality, to commence the battle against the criminal malignancy of state corruption.

Far from Ramkarran’s view that “There is clearly no across-the-board political appetite for steps to curb corruption and nepotism”, the coalition government has demonstrated the political will to book those found guilty of such crimes. A fact which the current United States Ambassador to Guyana recognized and lauded the efforts of the government. But perhaps, Ramkarran should explain his former party leader’s public vehemence whenever former PPP/C state officials are charged and brought to court. He should also say whether the GBTI had been correct in refusing to allow the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) access to requested documents, causing such a refusal to become the subject of a court battle.

To suggest, further, that “One ethno-political alliance obtains office and gorges itself, then the other gets into office and takes its turn”. This is clearly not an assumption; it is clearly a very evil, wicked, and devious attempt to paint the current government as corrupt as the former. Ramkarran is resorting to a Jagdeo political card of reverse psychology.

Editor, we all know the truth about corruption and its prime movers. The evidence is so publicly plain, that one often marvels at the disrespectful, bold show of opulence that has become so reminiscent of the criminal state. For example, just how did a permanent secretary account for a reported $14B in several bank accounts? Through the phone card business as he brazenly insulted the national intelligence?

Ramkarran surely is aware as to the pervasiveness of state corruption in this country, which has secreted its blood-sucking tentacles in every nook and cranny of this nation. He must know, too, that no such socio-immorality of an almost insurmountable level that threatens the viability of the state can be effectively confronted in its entirety, unless all the political sectors especially are willing to collaborate in a genuine manner. To such an end, it is clear that Jagdeo is not interested in such a joint enterprise, for he is very much aware of what the spotlight will reveal. The fact also that he had refused to be part of a “Walk against corruption”, held in April 2018, supports the view that the leader of the opposition is a totally disinterested party.

Let it be stated that no amount of constitutional amendments, proposed by Ramkarran that proposes re-configuration to how the Executive must function, while giving increased powers and authority to parliament, will end corruption. The latter will only be defeated by a clear national understanding as to the deleterious effects that it exacts on national development; its deprivation of social amenities to communities; and its capacity to distort and corrupt human morals. Added to this is the absolute necessity for our laws to be clearly unambiguous, in being dispensed for prosecution of offenders, and a judiciary ready to be condign once it becomes necessary.

The fact that the coalition government, in its many approaches in battling this national scourge since 2015, has been convening public awareness engagements in many regions, is testimony that it recognises that public education is a key factor that will bring about a self-awareness as to the need for public servants to resist involvement in dishonest practices that will have negative consequences for even their welfare.
Regards
Earl Hamilton