Corruption and leadership splits in the PPP
WEEKEND WITH FREDDIE
Kaieteur News
July 17, 2004
Both the Burnham and Hoyte regimes were characterised by sordid financial perversities.
In democratic countries, the ruling party is meticulous about misbehaviour. The opposition and the media are watchdogs whose curiosity and pursuits can lead to the loss of power.
In fact, many well known governments have either evaporated before their electoral mandates were over. or lost the forthcoming elections because of their scandal-ridden images.
Antigua is a good example of that. Guyana is a peculiar case in global politics. Guyana has an open electoral system, yet the elected party is not afraid of losing power in electoral competition because of corruptibility. Secondly, unlike all the other democratic countries in the world, the ruling party in Guyana has no conceivable interest in concealing or curtailing the role of kleptocracy among its first-level and subordinate functionaries. What explanation holds good in this particular context?
Before we attempt an answer, the obvious must be stated – the culture of corruption looks like it has saturated the entire Government of Guyana. If one, at the level of theory, can separate authoritarian behaviour from venal government, then the Burnham regime, in terms of usurpation of state resources for personal gain, and financial misappropriation by trusted officials was less corrupt than our present administration. The post-1992 PPP government is more corrupt that any period under Burnham from 1968 – 1985 when Burnham expired.
Under Hoyte’s period of 1985- 1992, there were serious forms of financial dealing under the table during the privatization programme but financial rascality and wanton corruption under the presidency of Desmond Hoyte were visibly more under control than in the present PPP administration with the exception of Cheddi Jagan’s leadership. Hoyte and Jagan were the two non-involved presidents we have had so far.
The PPP Government under Mrs. Jagan ran a clean presidency and throughout her political career has been untainted in terms of any financial wrong-doing.
But corruption did flourish during that Government which was helpless to confront it. A peculiar situation surrounded the PPP leadership. From this condition has emerged a policy-making decision. From this course of action, a train of events has been unleashed that makes the extirpation of corruption politically impossible.
PPP leadership, by virtue of the ideology of insecurity they carried with them all their lives, felt it was politically damaging to expose PPP officials who were accused of corruption. In a majority of instances, the PPP Government was disgusted at what they discovered in the Government of Guyana.
The PPP leadership was afraid that if and when a leading member of the inner elite was exposed, then the presidency itself could come in for attacks. The Government was afraid that the society would ignore the particular guilty official and dab the entire government as corrupt. They felt this was a risk they would not take.
It was a terrible mistake and now the cat is out of the bag. I presented an academic exposition of the endemic financial corruptibility that characterizes the present ruling party, last February at the Pegasus as part of the international conference on conflict resolution and good governance.
The proceedings of that conference are nearing publication, but in that paper, I failed to mention a seminal factor in the continuation of corruption within the walls of government. This essay here fills that lacuna. Before we cite this critical factor, a word on the personal role of Jagdeo.
Like Mrs. Jagan, there seems to be no evidence to indict Mr. Jagdeo of financial tampering. His name has never surfaced in any scandal.
President Bharrat Jagdeo does not have the leverage a normal party leader has in dealing with corrupt ministers. Bharrat Jagdeo is not the leader of the ruling party and he runs the presidency in a parallel situation with the other house of power - Freedom House.
This is a unique situation in global politics. Putin in Russia, Manning in Trinidad, Blair in the UK, Arthur in Barbados, to name a few, are leaders of their countries and their parties. In situations like Guyana where there is no definitive head of the ruling party, government is bound to be manipulated. One has to wait and see if a Guyanese scenario is not going to unfold in India where the head of the ruling party is not the head of government.
But if there are two poles of power in the Government, then complications get more irrational because there is a third level of power – the differing cabals within the ruling party. There is growing evidence that Dr. Luncheon is a force within the presidency that is independent of the de jure president, Bharrat Jagdeo.
Within Freedom House itself, there is a split among the power-brokers with a traditional PPP force versus a more realistic group. The leaders of the former are Ms. Jagan and Clement Rohee.
In such a confused situation where a government has no clearly defined hierarchical structure, there is an enormous space for corrupt party cadres who hold important state positions to engage in financial misconduct. This is simply my own explanation as to why the corruption has become so infested, endemic and asphyxiating.
I have tried to put an academic face on my opinion, and I believe some hard evidence exist to prove the theory of a multiplicity of leaders within the government or to substantiate the theory that there are more than two poles of power within the state and Jagdeo represents one such pole.
A reading of this analysis here clearly exempts the President from financial wrong-doing. I am fully aware this is the weak spot in my thesis and if it can be attacked this is where my critics will point to.
The President must be aware of the rumours that have been circulating a long time about huge financial scandals that are cascading like a waterfall over his government. Rumour, has it that he does nothing about it. Well rumours are rumours. Some of them turn out to be true at some point in time.
Right now, at this point in time, rumours cannot be substituted for hard evidence. But I do agree in Guyana, evidence is always hard to get, to prove corruption.