Last Friday’s sensationalist raid on the Competition Protection Commission chairman’s office was nothing short of a well-directed scene out of a Spaghetti Western where blood-thirsty bandidos were ready to lynch the town’s sheriff.
The loud-mouth leader of the West-of-Texas civil servants’ posse, having gulped several swigs of tequila, dismounted his high horse of ethical standards and stormed into the CPC, flanked by a dirty dozen pistoleros, aka, TV crews.
Having barked many a nonsense in all directions in such a persuasive manner that everybody believed him that the CPC chairman had imposed Gulag-type controls emanating from the Goebbels Book on Good Corporate Governance, the public was rightly waiting for an execution. This did not happen.
It turns out the whole raid was nothing more than a farce, as is everything else in this country that is driven by the interests of a disgruntled few who are prepared to destroy all principles of fairness and democracy for the sake of their deal going through (or the CPC’s “wrongful†decision being overturned.)
If the police and Attorney General’s reports are to be believed, the whole “scandal†about peeping cameras in the toilets and recording the conversations of the CPC employees was a fake. The staff had been notified well over a year ago, according to the investigations, and the monitoring equipment (without any sound recording capabilities) were mounted with their consent.
Could it be that certain members of the CPC staff did not want their executive chairman to hear what they were saying as regards ongoing cases? Would their conversations jeopardize the outcome of decisions in favour or against a merger or takeover? Did the raids and all the fuss have anything to do with the recent takeover bids in the banking sector? Who knows, it might be that the CPC chairman himself has lost trust in some of his staff but cannot do anything about it due to the guerrilla tactics of the militant public servants’ movement.
After the raid, the CPC chairman is now more than ever justified to place armed guards in front of his door. He has been entrusted with handling sensitive information that could make or break a small company or a large empire.
Believe it or not, the CPC chairman got this job on merit, a rare reality in a state where anybody with a six-shooter gets right of way, even when dashing through traffic lights on red.
The scandals and allegations of corruption are increasing by the day and civil society must wake up and try to put an end to this mess. On the other hand civil servants must realize that gone are the days when they imposed their own will on high ranking government officials.
As was the case of the failed attempt by the bank employees to start a war for their own interests, so too should the civil servants’ union leaders realize that they have sacrificed the good name of most of the hard-working government employees due to the actions of a hot-headed few. And all this for the privilege of getting a parking space with your name on it?
