When a Nation Normalizes Inhumanity

 When a Nation Normalizes Inhumanity.

Being an upstanding ,law abiding citizen  in this country is not a easy task.   A multitude of shortcomings, misgivings—-lack of empathy and compassion, makes it  a constant assault on the conscience. You see cruelty to animals, violence against children and women, brutality, partiality amongst citizens, and then you watch a political and judicial culture that rewards silence, obedience, and convenience. Too many people have learned that the safest way to “get things done” is to align with whoever holds power, no matter how rotten the arrangement may be. 

That is not pragmatism. It is moral surrender.

What makes it worse is that many of the same people who benefit from this system insist on calling it progress. We are told to be grateful for the basics — roads, water, electricity, schools, hospitals — as though these are gifts from rulers rather than the minimum duties of a state. But these are not privileges to be dispensed like charity. These are rights. And every time a government treats them like favors, it reveals how little respect it has for the people it claims to serve.

 A culture of impunity

One of the greatest dangers facing Guyana is not simply corruption in the abstract. It is the normalization of corruption as a way of life. When people begin to believe that influence matters more than law, that connections matter more than merit, and that political loyalty matters more than public duty, the republic starts to rot from within.

This is how abuse becomes ordinary and normalized. This is how public office becomes a private feeding trough. This is how citizens are conditioned to accept mediocrity, delay, and deception as the price of living under a government that says it is building a better future. And this is why so many people turn a blind eye when they are handed a small “tap up” or a temporary favor. They may know the system is broken, but they have been taught to survive inside the breakage instead of demanding repair.

The real tragedy is that this logic has seeped into every level of social life. It is seen in the quiet tolerance of abuse, the indifference to the suffering of the vulnerable, and the refusal to challenge power unless one’s own interest is directly threatened. A society cannot remain healthy when its moral compass is permanently bent toward survival at any cost.

Elite comfort, public suffering

The contrast between rulers and the ruled is often obscene.The people sweat in traffic while officials glide past in convoys with sirens. The people sit through blackouts while state functionaries enjoy generators and full air conditioning. The people are urged to conserve electricity while the offices of power remain cool, comfortable, and fully insulated from the hardship being imposed on everyone else.

We are also told that healthcare and education are improving, yet the evidence of confidence is revealing: those making the claims often do not rely on the same systems they praise. Their children are not the ones waiting in overcrowded wards or under-resourced classrooms. Their families are not the ones praying that public services will work well enough to save a life. Their private safety nets are robust precisely because the public ones are not.

This is why token projects are not enough. A handful of visible works, ribbon-cuttings, and publicity campaigns cannot erase the larger reality of failed governance. A clean road here, a renovated school there, or a gleaming building in the capital does not absolve a state that remains indifferent to the daily humiliation of ordinary people. Citizens should not have to kneel in gratitude for what the state is already obligated to provide.

The human cost

Behind every act of corruption is a person who pays the price. Sometimes that price is medical treatment delayed until it is too late. Sometimes it is justice denied because the poor cannot afford lawyers, connections, or endless court battles. Sometimes it is a child exposed to abuse because institutions meant to protect the vulnerable are weak, compromised, or absent. Sometimes it is a family trapped in poverty while public money disappears into favoritism, vanity, or political reward.

That is the real discrepancy and effects of bad governance. It is not only theft from the treasury. It is theft from life chances, from dignity, from safety, and from hope. When billions are wasted, the poor do not merely become poorer. They become invisible. And when citizens die because they cannot afford to seek care overseas, while the political class quietly preserves access to better options for itself, the message is unmistakable: there are two Guyanas, and only one of them is protected.

This is also why the abuse of law is so dangerous. When cybercrime laws, or any other laws, are used to intimidate critics, suppress lawful protest, or chill dissent, the state crosses from incompetence into authoritarian habit. The constitution becomes decorative. The right to speak becomes conditional. The right to protest becomes something the powerful tolerate only when it is harmless.

The apologist’s excuse

There is always someone ready with the same tired defense: “At least things are improving,” or “Where were you when the other side was in power?” These lines are not arguments. They are escape hatches. They are the language of people who have made peace with failure because they fear the consequences of demanding better.

Yes, governments differ. Yes, history matters. But no administration gets a free pass simply because its predecessor was also defective. That logic has trapped this country for too long. It encourages citizens to compare disappointments instead of demanding standards. It turns national life into a contest of who disappointed us less, rather than who served the public best.

Progress that depends on silence about disconnected governance and corruption is not progress. Development that coexists with selective justice is not development. And reform that asks people to be grateful while their rights are still being treated as favors is not reform at all.

What must change

Guyana does have money. What it lacks is consistent political will, institutional courage, and an electorate that refuses to be managed by fear, handouts, or partisan loyalty. If the country is serious about recovery, then the standard must rise across the board.

That means real accountability, not staged outrage. It means independent oversight bodies that can act without political interference. It means procurement systems that are open to scrutiny. It means courts that are accessible to ordinary people, not only to those with connections. It means laws that protect dissent rather than punish it. It means Parliament behaving like a democratic institution, not a place for self-serving bargains and selective ethics.

It also means citizens must stop confusing survival with consent. Taking a small benefit from power does not erase the damage that power is doing. A “tap up” is not a substitute for justice. A project is not a substitute for integrity. A speech is not a substitute for service.

A final demand

This country does not need more excuses, more propaganda, or more photo opportunities. It needs leaders with the will to do right by the people and a public willing to hold them accountable when they do wrong.

We must stop accepting a system in which the powerful live large while the people are told to endure. We must stop treating rights as privileges. We must stop praising the minimum as though it were mercy. And we must stop rewarding the very habits that keep the country wounded.

The people’s lives are hard enough already. They should not also have to carry the cost of elite greed, political cowardice, and institutional failure. Guyana can do better than this. But it will only do better when its people decide that mediocrity is no longer acceptable, and that silence is no longer a safe place to hide.

THE 592 GUARDIAN