How authority and power infect

- Final departures - body and soul

“Infect?” In a medical/health-care context to infect means to contaminate (especially with some disease or “some disease-producing matter; as in communicating pathogens.”) All quite negative to one’s good health. But as with the nuances of language, there is also a positive connotation of infecting. We speak of someone infecting another with love enthusiasm or hope. Influencing for the good.

However friends, in my caption “infect” is used in the very negative sense as today’s provocation refers to the alltoo-familiar “condition” in which the power-patients become victims of status and position and whereby very many make unfortunate victims of others. How rampant infections caused by position becomes.

Let’s spend a few paragraphs to explain. And we’ll use the still-new PPP Government as a live, real-time elementary case-study. And please, appreciate my simple “layman’s language.”

Authority becomes power, becomes corruption. Why?

“Authority” in this context refers to the status and ability to exert or influence the activities and behaviours of others. There are other formal definitions, of course.

Parents, ministers of government, Heads of Boards and Commissions, many CEO’s and Chairpersons, Political Heads can all exert their authority. For the general common good or for very personal upliftment or gain. If the person in authority succumbs to the various temptations of office, favouritism towards some - like chosen relatives - nepotism takes hold. Nepotism quickly infects systems and ignores qualifications, experiences or ability. Hundreds so excluded become bitter and hostile to authority.

It is advised that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” “Power” for today’s presentation here means - simply but significantly - extreme, sometimes sole, authority; “the position, usually from the topmost of an hierarchy, of ascendancy over others.” Autocrats and dictators love extreme power. It’s theirs to misuse. The “subjects,” the people hardly enjoy democratic rights or opportunities. A perfect storm for the expression of dissatisfaction no matter how long societal redress will take.

But why do office-holders and decision- makers become discriminatory? Corrupt

Gradual then lasting infection

A perfectly sincere, even professional

new minister, CEO or chairperson

assumes office. Slowly, or quickly the magnitude, the sheer scope of office, responsibilities and challenges confront the new office-holder.

Friends, who probably voted, become upset as access to the big one becomes scarce, limited.

The minister then makes new “friends” because of high office. The Minister can then influence certain actions on behalf of the business-person friend, the contractor, the relative.

There are ways the senior office-holder can be “rewarded” which no Integrity Commission can detect. If the minister, new CEO or chairperson was once needy,

or is now victim to greed, the rot and habit of corrupt practices take hold. Those who offered the accepted bribes and favours know the officer-holder’s weakness and secrets. Values be dammed! Institutional corruption is now a widespread characteristic. Note what the PPP is now discovering. So we all then now know what to look for. So let’s with some civility -

monitor these “new ones.”

Departures, body and soul

Partly because I failed to

avoid

a politics-oriented issue above - as I originally intended to do today - I now touch on a very relatively strange realm: the inevitability of death and what it means. Especially in my own beautiful but blighted Guyana.

The American James Baldwin holds the view that “God gave Noah the Rainbow Sign. He said no more water, the fire next time!“Was this great Afro- American writer referring to (death by) bombs, fires, nuclear destruction (instead of floods)?

Frankly Speaking friends, whenever I pass by the long-standing national disgrace that is the Georgetown municipality’s Le Repentir Cemetery my decision to have my bodily remains cremated is reinforced. (To me the only other decades – long national disgrace, besides Le Repentir, is electricity blackouts.)

Today everywhere Jesus Christ traversed - if you believe Holy Bible storiesthere are conflicts producing hundreds upon hundreds of dead. Do you see how Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine, Jerusalem, Yemen and numerous Asian countries bury their thousands? Mass graves and incineration seldom provide any “dignity” after mass passing.

But then I’m told it’s the eternal repose of the soul, the spirit which matters. Our bodies are/were merely vessels accommodating that spiritual essence of life that reportedly is really indestructible. The soul does not die. That’s why at farewells, we pray that it “rests in peace” hopefully. (Hindus - the devout ones - actually believe that there is rebirth of some souls in new bodies- re-incarnation. I need to study that much more.)

So I invite you-all friends to spare some thoughts about the only-thing that’s one hundred percent certain in all lives -

death!

The child or teenager should be taught. One’s faith should prepare. But it’s a natural human emotion to reject loss, to grieve. What an achievement however,

not to fear that inevitable departure -

death! Work on it friends.

Ponder briefly…

● 1) This is rare! I agree with Hammie Green on something! Whether by Houseto-House registration or what, our Voters Roll must be updated beginning next year. Do you know that Guyana is the only territory in these parts that cannot hold elections at short notice? An eternal blight?

● 2) Hammie’s comrade, V. Alexander speaks about truth to precede political reconciliation. I wonder: could the PNC ever admit real truth into its soul?

’ Til next week! (allanafenty@yahoo.com)