Dear Editor,
The latest round of gaffes and missteps by government officials — and the muted public reaction that has followed — should trouble every citizen who cares about accountable governance. It confirms a pattern that has quietly hardened into custom: Guyanese, as a people, have granted our leaders a kind of pseudo-immunity that no democracy can afford to sustain.
This immunity is not written into any law. No statute shields a minister from criticism, and no constitutional clause exempts an official from scrutiny. Yet in practice, the shield exists all the same — built out of ethnic and party loyalty, a culture of deference to authority, and a media environment that too often finds itself boxed in rather than backed up. When a minister misspeaks, mismanages a project, or is credibly accused of wrongdoing, the instinctive public response tends to split along partisan lines rather than converge around a shared demand for answers. Supporters explain the gaffe away; opponents weaponise it for the next election cycle. Rarely does either camp insist, simply and consistently, that the office-holder be held to account regardless of which party they represent.
This is not a new phenomenon, but it deserves fresh attention now. We have watched officials survive credible allegations, dismiss critical reports as biased rather than engage with their substance, and treat public office as a personal shield rather than a public trust. Each time this happens without real consequence, the bar for what counts as a “gaffe” — as opposed to a genuine failure of duty — rises a little further. The result is a public square where outrage is performed but accountability is rarely delivered.
Part of the problem lies with us, the citizenry. We have allowed loyalty to party and personality to substitute for loyalty to good governance. We forgive in “our” leaders what we would condemn in the opposition’s, and in doing so, we teach every government — regardless of its stripe — that the political cost of a misstep is negotiable. Institutions meant to provide independent checks, from parliamentary committees to integrity bodies, can only be as assertive as the public pressure that stands behind them. When that pressure evaporates along partisan lines, so does the incentive for institutions to act.
History bears this out. In the six decades since independence, it is difficult to point to a single Guyanese politician who has been investigated, convicted, and imprisoned by a Guyanese court for corruption or abuse of office committed while serving. Allegations of corruption, mismanagement, and abuse of office against sitting and former officials have been numerous, but a matching record of domestic convictions and custodial sentences simply has not followed. That gap between accusation and consequence is precisely the pseudo-immunity this letter is describing.
None of this is to say every allegation is proven or every gaffe is disqualifying; due process and fair hearing matter, and rushing to judgement carries its own dangers. But there is a wide difference between withholding a verdict and withholding scrutiny altogether. Guyanese deserve leaders who answer directly for their conduct, and a citizenry willing to demand that answer irrespective of who is in office.
If our courts and institutions cannot be relied upon to deliver accountability, then the only real check left in our hands is the ballot box. It is the one instrument every citizen holds regardless of party, and the one place where forgiveness or punishment of an administration’s conduct is entirely up to us. If we want a political culture defined by accountability rather than by tribal forgiveness, the change has to start with us. We must be as willing to question our own side as we are quick to condemn the other, and to vote accordingly. Only then will “pseudo-immunity” stop being an apt description of how power is held in this country.