Singing the blues, dirty money and the changes voted for
Dear Editor,
Many citizens in this society are crying the blues. A Howlin’ Wolf would be muted over the lyrics and embedded messages; and so, too, would Muddy Waters who could have found the threnody too thick for his tastes. These blues are sad songs lacking in either pulsation or enchantment; they bring cringing.
The first strain in the dirge is that business is bad. Yes, it is indeed so. And it is so because the dirty money quickly had to find huge rocks under which to go underground and disappear. The rocks had to be huge since there was so much of that kind of money circulating in the system. Now some of those same good people singing a blue streak are among those complaining about crime and violence, and the wreckage inflicted upon the nation’s psyche. Clearly, these unthinking folks are in dire need of the benefits that accrue from additional brain cells, many functioning ones. For it has been palpable and obvious that dirty money is the multivitamins and steroids that have powered the crime, the criminals, and the surging crime waves.
So something has to give. What will it be? Having cake and eating it too? Tempering the toxins with honey? Or in classic Guyanese fashion talking one thing, while meaning something else and supporting still another? Everyone and their sleeping dog knows that if the dirty money is squeezed long enough, hard enough, and remorselessly, then the interrelated derivatives of crime and guns and trafficking and criminal conspiracies can be exposed and excised. And so, too, might (might) be the political and commercial nexuses. Thus this blue rendition of bad business has little following, save for the direct beneficiaries and the indirect trickledown accomplices.
Another blues hymn soaring to the rooftops is that this not the change voted for; when this pitch is examined more closely, it ruptures at even low registers, shabby revelations abound. The changes demanded, and expected, revolve around people not liked to be jettisoned; that political adversaries be sent packing; and that unacceptable conduct be upheld, and not be touched. In terms of the latter, the loudest blues lament has its roots in corruption that embraces a particular love: a fervent insatiable love for money.
For decades bureaucratic fish were allowed to gorge the rich nectar from the public treasury and the sometimes vulnerable, sometimes collaborating public itself. The scheming predatory bureaucrats were given free rein so that the even bigger political fish (sharks, really) could engage in their own unlimited uninhibited financial perversities. But in today’s Guyana, the interested (and ensnared) parties do not welcome change of any such kind. This is culture, this is romance, this is also political heresy, and must neither be contemplated nor uttered nor practised. Change of this quality be damned; and so too be those codes of conduct and the rest.
Now that the heat of scrutiny is on, there are dark mutters that this is certainly not among the changes voted for last May. Thus, the government is caught between the old devil of corruption and a deep wide green sea. To a noticeable degree, green is for identification (think political), and green also stands for currency. It is some of that same dirty currency pinpointed earlier weaving its radioactive way into grasping hands and contaminating the rest of the citizenry by its mere presence. This is a tough nut for the government to address; a crafty opposition lurks; it knows that funding trumps fidelity.
Editor, here is the last word: a livable country will only come from clean government, clean bureaucracy, clean business, and overall clean practices. Dirty dollars and corrupt participants are incompatible and outright inimical to the realization of such a livable country. Something has to give. And that is not singing blues of any kind.
Yours faithfully, GHK Lall