By GHK Lall- The PPP Government’s chief strategist, chief policymaker, chief salesman, chief trash talker, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo had something to say the other day. No! to any Opposition involvement in the national procurement apparatus. Too much delay and destruction. To emphasize how adamant he is: hell, NO! Issue raised; case closed. Let it not surface again. Should the VP object to me putting words in his mouth, I would gladly rescind them all. Nonetheless, I do have some words of my own for him, Excellency Ali, and the entire PPP machinery. Fasten seatbelts, please.
The PPP Government and its propagandists may lie to themselves, then deceive Guyanese about little corruption, or hide behind new projects. They are lying, distracting. Corruption is PPP culture, crisis. Thus: no to opposition in key areas. Then, what about civil society? Patriotic civil society, not PPP civil society. President Ali could call 100 fore day morning verbal slugfests, but corruption and dis trusts are cancers decimating his government.
I could write a million words that corruption in procurement is negligible (it is not), and it wouldn’t matter. Citizens would laff. It is how perceptions rage about pervasive corruption in tender and tender oversight within the government’s corruption complex. Dr. Jagdeo could come up with his 95 percent clean contract business scenario, and all he does is make himself sound and look comical.
To put all this cursing and condemning of the PPP for chronic corruption to rest, Dr. Jagdeo has one clean shot. His best bet outside of ethical civil society presences is to invite the political opposition to be part crucial decision-making areas, such as procurement. Let them disturb and distort, then deal with them. But that may be too demanding for Jagdeo’s delicate anti-corruption constitution. He can, however, still open the door for adversaries to have observer status.
Due to cynicism, I have misgivings about many opposition presences around tenders, contract awards, and such. It doesn’t take much locally to make good men do lovely imitations of a turtle, i.e., capsize themselves. For a share of the booty, naturally. And who has more money than the PPP Government of Ali and Jagdeo? It is enough to make a Supreme Court judge forget his ethics. Still, I believe that with an opposition presence around the entire bid-award process, the positives outweigh the nasty.
The PPP Govt proves it is clean (nothing to hide). Prove it’s open (no fear). Prove it is about ‘oneness’ (not divisive). Who could go wrong doing so? Yeah, but the gravy is too sweet.
The bad luck for this government is that most of its people are too damn greedy. They want all the rich procurement returns for themselves. It is big, big money. Whatever the going [percentage] rate these days, with hundreds of billions in contracts to be awarded, which crooked government would be open to having its sworn (supposedly) political opponents in the hen house?
Therefore, the dollar logic is unbeatable. Leave things as they are, let the good procurement times roll. President Ali ‘try a ting’ a few Tuesdays back, but was very careful to walk the narrow line of late completion of projects. For the life of him, the president was not going to go anywhere near the contract (public works projects) corruption monster. Regardless of how reckless the president may sometimes appear to be, he is not that irresponsible to so much as touch the Achilles heel of his own government and party.
In all this, neither President Ali nor Vice President has done much to persuade of their anti-corruption credentials. No question that both of them have proven themselves to be brash talkers on most issues, including corruption, but with little of substance. The unexplained wealth of their cronies mocks their platitudes. In thinking of these two noble political sons of Guyana, the butcher’s business comes to mind. Excellency Ali believes that brandishing a verbal meat cleaver will help him to bowl over issues and inquirers. All he does is splatter himself, making matters worse.
In contrast, Excellency Jagdeo has settled for the more delicate operation of the delicatessen meat carver: he slices matters so thinly that it is surprising that he hasn’t lost a joint or two. As one example using the Big Boss’s own representations, he noted that 95% of contracts awarded could past any filter: from the tender process to the performance of the winners.
Considering that 58% of this year’s initial $1.146 trillion went to infrastructure in some shape or form, the result of that is $558 billion for building from scratch or refurbishing what could use a facelift. The 5% (according to Bossman Bharrat) of contracts that may be iffy still amounts to a mouthwatering $27.9 billion, which is a huge amount for a country where 2 out of 5 citizens don’t have enough to eat daily.
Corruption is killing this country. Yet leading politicians gaff about it, make fools of Guyanese. Any non-PPP (gov’t or party) presence could help ease this national sickness. It could be the opposition, civil society, activists, or others. They can function as brakes, as watchdogs, unless they also get infected by the corruption virus. It is lifelong.