For my column yesterday, I wanted to analyse the statement of the Guyana Revenue Authority on the Ingrid Griffith controversy that was carried in the two independent dailies. However, I thought a comment on the one billion dollars owed collectively to the City Council and the NIS by a number of wealthy individuals and some profitable companies was more exigent.
I had planed to assess the GRA's statement in today's issue but I noticed that the Stabroek News editorialized on this inane and foolish statement in defence of the GRA's by-passing of Ms. Grifffith. It seems the Stabroek beat me to it. Every commentator in Guyana should make an evaluation of the GRA's response. It shows the abysmal level to which the Guyana Government has descended.
Read the following incredibly stupid explanation from the GRA. After praising Ms. Griffith for successfully acting for Lambert Marks and her efficiency in confronting corruption while in that post, the GRA tells us that; “However, the GRA believes that if it were to appoint an internal staff to the supernumerary post (the Commissioner of Customs and Trade Administration), it will not restore the public's confidence nor will it give credence to the GRA's effort to fight corruption.”
Surely, President Jagdeo and the head of the GRA are not going to stand by such a foolish statement for two reasons. The language makes no sense. Secondly, the explanation has no basis in logic. Let's explain.
First, where in the textbook on politics, administrative science and management science does it say that a long –serving member of an organization is not suited to fight corruption within the internal structure of that entity? If that theory can stand up, then all the textbooks on those three subjects have to be scrapped and re-written.
The mumbo-jumbo story gets weirder when the Guyanese people are told by the very GRA that Ms. Griffith was given the top-class job for two years and was able to fight corruption with efficiency and dedication.
For some weird, psychic reason, if Ms. Griffith was confirmed, then she would have undergone an immediate reversal of her character because as the GRA put it, an internal staff would not have given “credence to the GRA's effort to fight corruption.” If she held the post of Commissioner of Customs and Trade Administration and she managed to extirpate existing forms of corruption, then why would she fail if confirmed in the job? This simply just doesn't make sense.
However, there is a hidden meaning in that approach to Ms. Griffith that the Commissioner-General of the GRA himself, Mr. Khurshid Sattaur, should be worried about. Ms. Griffith has more than 25 years service with the revenue system, so does Mr. Sattaur. If as an internal staffer, Ms. Griffith would not be able to sustain the GRA's credibility of fighting corruption if she becomes Commissioner of Customs and Trade Administration, then by that logic are we to assume that Mr. Sattaur himself and other GRA seniors with over twenty years service are not capable of attacking perversities that confront the GRA?
Obviously this is what any commonsensical mind can read into the GRA's explanation. I find this thing so weird and macabre that I would like to repeat it for emphasis so readers can deeply reflect on what is happening in Guyana . Here we go again; the GRA's position is that if it appoints Ms. Griffith as Commissioner of Customs and Trade Administration, by virtue of her being an internal staff, her installation would not allow the GRA to “restore the public confidence nor will it give credence to the GRA's efforts to fight corruption.”
Any person in possession of their mental faculties would interpret this to mean that in order to fight corruption, an internal staffer would be less effective than a fresh face from outside of the organization.
So the bitingly relevant question is this – does the GRA have internal staffers capable of eliminating graft and financial irregularities? The answer given the language in the GRA's statement, is no.
In the press release, the GRA did not point to the type of corruption it has in mind. Is it the kind of bribery that customs officials often meet in their encounters with business people or is it some of the ill-intentioned staffers in the GRA? Let's follow the GRA's press release more closely. The GRA informs the public “that there is an external perception that the GRA is not taking drastic action to correct irregularities, especially within the Customs department.”
After fifteen years in power, after wholesale dismissals of the senior layer of Customs officials that worked under the PNC prior to October 1992 by the new PPP Government, after the harsh imposition of the Fraud Squad on the Customs and Excise Departments by President Cheddi Jagan, after the rapid promotion of certain PPP favoured custom officers that eventually replaced the victimized ones that worked under the PNC, after stacking the GRA with PPP party-card holders, is the Guyana Government telling this nation that there are irregularities in the GRA that necessitate the employment of an outsider to overseas customs operations? So is the Government admitting that their own selections are not to be trusted?
The Ingrid Griffith drama at the GRA has come as no surprise to me. It shouldn't to any analyst that analyzes the use of power by the PPP. To date, this fiasco is yet another manifestation that those who hold power are blind to reason.
Remember Marc Anthony speaking at the funeral of Julius Caesar, told the gathering, “Oh judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beast. And men have lost their reason.” A long time ago, those that have ruled this land have left reason behind. It is no different today. Cicero, the famous Roman thinker once wrote that “reason alone lifts us above the level of the beast.” The beast has defeated reason in Guyana today.