Frankly Speaking Corrupted youth, thievery, as honesty dies ‘Look how nuff different tings gone-up girl…’
Yes, here I go again early in this still “new” year. A repeat sermonette on the cancer of local corruption, the potentially lost youth as thievery thrives.
Too negative? Okay. But just check your daily media, the gaff at the workplace and the fellows at the club or liquor restaurant table.
Electoral fraud, which preceded the arrival and the sensibilities of young Guyanese now under-40, flourished and was made into an electoral art-form (1968 to 1985). Honest parents of those Guyanese under forty will acknowledge how the will of many voters was appropriated. To me, Frankly Speaking, that sustained wave of electoral thievery set the scene for all the other elements of widespread cancerous corruption as we know it today.
The advent and reign of Mr Jagdeo’s administrations took hold of Burnham’s PNC brand of national wrongdoing and fashioned it into the fine-art of sustained, pandemic corruption. Enter a full-scale characterisation of a corruptocracy and kleptocracy. There is, of course, a global context for all the above. But even as two wrongs can’t make one right, I bemoan the effect on the psyche (morality?) of today’s young Guyanese. Nearly threequarters of our nation.
Two years ago I quoted at length, a Jason Hickel who took Transparency International to task for painting only Third World societies as being havens for corruption. He explored corruption as the institutionalized hallmark of the developed world’s multi-nationals, for example. Even Western governments are not exempted from surreptitious corrupt practices even through international “diplomacy”, claims Hickel, who also scoffs at the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) berating the poorer global South.
It is tough to deny that too many government leaders of poorer Third World nations succumb to the fruits of corruption even in the face of pervasive poverty there. My concern is that local executive corruption and thievery in high places has effectively influenced the youth of our nation. This means that future leaders and decisionmakers might already be tainted mentally.
Today, young Guyanese see and hear of alleged corruption throughout myriad national agencies and institutions – from GECOM to the Ministry of Health to NICIL to other numerous entities under the scrutiny of the forensic audits. The young, especially needy youth, are impressed by get-rich-quick officials and cocaine-barons – the new role-models.
I’ll leave what is to be done to you today but will remind that cosmetic popular “religion” with modern bouncy music, the Gita, the Koran or Bible are now hardly any match for the SUV’s, the high rise buildings or the clothes and jewellery that illegality accesses. Discuss…
Outside of a GTT office this past Monday a young female customer was fuming into her cellular phone: “Girl, dey juss tell me dat de internet money gone up!”
She was mad partly because she was probably unaware of the utility’s increased charges. But she was not alone. Housewives and all Guyanese, in general, are currently coming to terms with increases in liquor licences fees, Harbour Bridge fees, taxes on electricity and water, fuel, airport security, the environment levy and cost of transfer of motor vehicle registration.
The housewife or needy teenager might have hardly studied the 2017 Budget technicalities but breadwinners would surely be crafting personal domestic strategies to survive a reasonable life in a most challenged economy.
.1) Our President, the Historian, seems to like designating days and renaming things. Does he prefer to supplement – or supplant?
.2) We have a good idea of what the knowledgeable, intellectual Culture Czar Ruel Johnson thinks of past Culture Ministers like Xavier, Teixeira and Anthony. Wonder how he assesses Minister Nicolette after 1 ½ years?
.3) Members of the Judiciary will be benefiting from sustained continuing education!
.3b) How many other democracies – open information societies or not – dare to subject their politicians/nominees for high office to the brutal public confirmation scrutiny as America does?
.4) Our corruption culture has also spawned a sub-culture of “contacts” – knowing somebody inside – your connection to “get through”.
.5) The new Vendors Mall should rise on the premises of the old Stabroek Co-op building soon.
’Til next week! (allanafenty@yahoo.com)