The great contracts hustle

November 06, 2001

There are two kinds of people in T&T today, who seem to be quite capable of co-existing with the most vile and pronounced forms of corruption. These two are the middle-class professional profiteers and their counterparts at the lower end - the hustlers in the ETP, the "lumpen".

The mindset of these two sets of people are one and the same. One can hear them over and over again proclaiming either that "corruption is not an issue" or that "all governments are corrupt". And such an assumption, they believe, allows them the "moral" room, so to speak, to justify anything under this sun.

The "big-boys" are elements of the business-oriented "middle-class", who by their actions and their wielding and dealing are nothing but vulgar profit-seekers, devoid of ethics and morality, seeking at every turn the opportunity to enrich themselves, their relatives and very close friends.

These people are unmoved by the cost of their actions to the general welfare of the nation. Their "politics" is mere cover and extension of their economic hustle for government contracts to develop infrastructure and social amenities under the billion-dollar Public Sector Improvement Programme (PSIP) and under other contingency plans financed out of the budgeted Consolidated Fund.

The most glaring examples of this form of corruption, that will most certainly come to light in the near future, particularly if the government changes after December 10, involves the use of statutory authorities to cover all kinds of improper and illegal disbursement of taxpayers' monies, with total disregard for tendering procedures, even at times running afoul of conditionalities as mandated by well-established Public Service regulations and by international financial institutions such as the IDB and the World Bank.

And of course there are the concomitant cases of the blatant rewarding of the people who facilitated these transactions, with lofty social positions and astronomical salaries and perks. Imagine $60,000 and $70,000 a month. For what?

Every single Minister in this present regime, when they first came to office, requested a listing of all contracts given out by the respective ministries. Permanent Secretaries and accounting officers were either sent on extended leave, transferred and/or found himself/herself faced with a parallel "PS on contract"/"personal advisor to Minister", who virtually took over the affairs of the ministry.

"Contracts" are the obvious means through which "kickbacks", bribes and graft could be easily facilitated while, at the same time, the highly publicised and constant PR that accompanies the handing out of these contracts to do everyday tasks allows for the regime to "talk performance".

Suddenly we have found ourselves with a central government taking over every single everyday task, emasculating local government authorities in the process, and blowing up their significance to justify its kind of "performance" and to cover-up of corrupt practices, while in the mean the country cries out for vision and direction from a central government whose membership, though filled with the smarts of plundering, stands sadly lacking in intellectual capacity.

The boss was right: Dhanraj was the best Minister! And if these middle-class managers/hustlers facilitate the illegal transactions under the veil of "government contracts", then the lumpen in the ETP, besides doing cheaply the actual work required, provides "political muscle on the ground" for the regime, particularly in the Corridor.

That is the scenario that has been forced on us since 1995. And today it is pathetic that this regime that has collapsed in a mere nine months, has got the gall to come back to the electorate to talk about its performance. It is even more despicable that there are some people who are prepared to listen.

Even worse is the case of one notable lawyer whose now deceased nephew had hacked into the bank records of some present Minister, dubbed then as the $12-million man. He, that lawyer, informed this country boldly that if the "name of that Minister was ever released, the Government would fall," suggesting thereby that the corrupt Minister is prominent in the regime.

But today that same lawyer is busy offering himself to be part of the very regime. No one asked him. He is offering himself, of course, with a litany of silly conditions that even he does not take seriously. So madly is he in love with this country and so madly he wishes to serve. All his efforts will serve to do is seek to make "corruption" a non-issue.

The citizenry will answer on December 10. But the level to which some of us have sunk is, to say the least, frightening!