STATE CAPTURE BY DESIGN

592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣 –𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 ♦𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮♦𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮

A 592 GUARDIAN | ACCOUNTABILITY EDITORIAL

State Capture by Design

Guyana is being governed increasingly by the logic of concentration, not consultation. What on the surface is sold as development is often, on closer inspection, the careful assembling of political, financial and institutional power into fewer and fewer hands.

The latest evidence is not subtle. A government-backed effort to place the Development Bank under the direct control of the Finance Minister, without meaningful oversight from the Opposition, transparency bodies or civil society, is not reform in any democratic sense.

It is centralization. And when a state centralizes control over credit, appointments and lending discretion, it is not merely reorganizing administration; it is deciding who gets to rise and who must remain excluded.

That is why the new aircraft story, acquired by XEN Aviation- which some will present as a sign of private-sector confidence and national progress, deserves a more skeptical reading. Yes, Guyana needs improved domestic connectivity. Yes, hinterland aviation matters. But in a society where access to state power, finance and regulatory advantage increasingly appears to follow the same narrow corridors, even legitimate business expansion can become part of a larger architecture of privilege.

This is how oligarchic systems mature. They do not announce themselves with slogans. They arrive through appointments, lending power, procurement channels, regulatory softness and institutional capture. They arrive when the gates of opportunity are opened wide for the connected but remain locked for the ordinary citizen. They arrive when the small entrepreneur is told to wait, comply and queue, while the well-connected are ushered forward with speed, access and approval.

A Development Bank controlled directly by the Finance Minister, with weak or absent independent oversight, is not just an administrative concern. It is a constitutional and democratic one.

Development finance is supposed to widen participation in the economy, not become another instrument through which influence is distributed to the already powerful.

If the bank’s directors, chairperson and deputy chair are all appointed by the very political authority that stands to benefit from its operations, then the institution is compromised at its foundation.

And once that foundation is compromised, the rest follows predictably. Lending decisions become opaque. Due diligence becomes selective. Favoritism acquires the appearance of policy. Those with access to the inner circle move faster, borrow easier, and expand more aggressively, while everyone else is left to compete in a rigged environment dressed up as market freedom.

This is why the debate cannot be reduced to personalities. It is not enough to say one businessman is expanding, or one aircraft has entered the fleet, or one project is commercially sensible. The deeper question is whether Guyana is building an economy that is open, competitive and rule-bound, or one in which the state quietly functions as a mechanism for consolidating wealth among the politically adjacent.

That question matters because institutions do not collapse all at once. They are hollowed out gradually. Oversight is weakened first. Then rules are bent. Then exceptions become routine. Then the public is told that every concentration of power is necessary for efficiency, every objection is obstruction, and every critique is somehow anti-development.

By the time citizens realize what has happened, the machinery of advancement has already been converted into the machinery of exclusion.

Guyana is now at risk of exactly that trajectory. A class is emerging—wealthy, insulated and politically protected—whose reach may soon exceed the practical limits of democratic accountability.

When people accumulate enough money, leverage and institutional influence, elections remain necessary but no longer sufficient. Ballots still exist, but the terrain on which voters stand has already been tilted.

That is the danger. Not merely corruption in the conventional sense, but state capture in the deeper sense: the bending of institutions to preserve wealth, shield influence and determine outcomes in advance. When the judiciary, regulators, financial institutions and development agencies all begin to reflect the preferences of a narrow circle, democracy survives only as a ceremony.

This is why vigilance matters now, before the architecture hardens. A nation does not need to formally abolish democracy to weaken it beyond recognition. It only needs to make sure that the most important levers of power are no longer meaningfully accessible to scrutiny, competition or dissent.

That is the real story. Not merely an aircraft. Not merely a bank. Not merely one appointment or one expansion. It is the gradual conversion of the state into a tool of accumulation for a privileged few, while the language of development is used to disguise the transfer.

Guyana must not mistake growth for inclusion, nor activity for fairness. If the country is serious about building a modern economy, then development institutions must be insulated from partisan control, lending must be transparent, and oversight must be real. Otherwise, the promise of national advancement will be captured long before ordinary citizens ever reach the runway.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙘, 𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙖𝙛𝙛𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙨.