In the political circles there were those who expressed no surprise because they said that they had been talking about corruption all the while. I know that long before the date of the last elections was announced the main opposition party made it a point to cite instances of corruption at the drop of a hat.

In Parliament there was scarcely a session that corruption did not feature. Local calypsonians sang about it and at the last Mashramani finals one went so far as to identify known cases of corruption.

I know that many people were quick to point out that there was corruption at just about every level of the society and even knew that. As a reporter, people would come to me and complain that they had given money to one official or the other only to be shafted. People spoke about tendering for contracts and knowingly added ten per cent to the bid, because they knew that if they did not offer some official or the other they would not get the bid.

In some cases people reported that officials went after them once they were awarded a contract for their share of the cake. Corruption was all about.

Importers spoke of paying something to Customs officials for a lower tariff on their imports and people who wanted important documents in a hurry readily handed over some money to the individual entrusted with preparing the document.

Numerous reports came out of the Deeds Registry and even more came out of the courts. I know of people who sat outside the magistrate courts and informed people that they had access to certain magistrates and that they could ensure either a drastically reduced sentence or an acquittal. These people would collect money and I do know of a particular case where an individual passed over a wad of money to a man for transfer to a certain magistrate.

The big question is “Why was this not reported?”

The answer is simple. No one would admit to paying a bribe and certainly, no one would actually stand before the Chief Justice and admit to passing money either because of fear of the Chief Justice or because as they would say, they simply want to avoid trouble.

But here we are only talking about corruption at the official level. We have the simple case of chauffeurs who are entrusted to filling up their vehicles at the behest of the employer. They would cut a deal with the gas station attendant and produce vastly inflated bills. Later they would share the difference between the actual charge and the inflated bill.

Guyana Power and Light is a hotbed of corruption. The past ten or 15 years saw a large number of squatter settlements in residential communities. Today, nearly all of these homes have electricity because employees simply collected money from the occupants to make the connections.

Many of these homes do not have meters and in cases where they have it was simply because the authorities had no option but to try to collect from these people who had enjoyed free electricity for a very long time.

Many people can cite myriad cases and still not touch on every possible instance of corruption in the society. But these do not make Guyana the corrupt country it is. The international monitors cite other factors.

They look at the courts where sometimes there are perverse decisions; they look at the electoral practices and they look at certain employment practices. We know that there have been challenges to many of the decisions handed down by the courts and since there is always the threat of contempt I will desist from saying anything further on this.

I can however look at some of the employment practices. Freddie Kissoon has repeatedly written about the children of politicians getting special favours. He got into trouble but that has not stopped him.

Special favours for the children of the politicians are nothing new. One may argue that it is more widespread these days but I do not have the figures to support such a contention. Indeed I have known cases of many people applying for a certain position only to lose out to someone lesser qualified and related to a politician or a friend of politicians.

The solution to this is careful monitoring of the system. Many entities would say that they do not have the money or the resources to check on the various loopholes. But they do have the wherewithal to take action if cases of corruption are brought to their attention. More often than not they choose to ignore them.

Take the case of those employees in the Customs who ended up rich beyond their wildest dreams. Certainly the employer had the resource to check on his employees and in cases where the sudden display of wealth surfaced, could have asked the relevant questions.

Our statutes do not force us to disclose the source of our income so quite often it is not a crime to suddenly display wealth. But there is always the Inland Revenue Department. This department simply had to demand the necessary taxes. It has the power to determine the revenue that led to the accumulation of wealth and then charge the necessary taxes. This has never been done in the case of most Customs employees.

The other day the Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority chose to send one of his senior employees on leave because he feared that the individual would have used his position to accumulate money to pay a lawsuit that is facing him.

The action may have been precipitate but at least this Commissioner General has taken steps to close one potential loophole.

There is corruption all over the place. Corruption enabled the survival of the backtrack industry. It also enabled the passage of large volumes of cocaine through the various ports.

The late Vibert Inniss was believed killed because he managed to have some of these cocaine shipments intercepted overseas. Why did he not stop the shipments here? Because he felt that justice would not have been served. Depending on who was responsible for the shipment, the matter would have been swept under the rug.

Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon said recently that the government has introduced systems to plug many of the loopholes. He spoke of the budgetary measures and the computerisation to negate non-existent expenditures.

The Licence Revenue Department is also computerising its records and it is finding a lot of corrupt practices. One official said that all she could do is to report the findings. She said that the prosecution is up to other people.