Dear Editor,
We do indeed live in surreal and perplexing times in Guyana. In August of this year we were informed that the Guyana government had received US$6.7 million from the United States’ Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). For a country to be selected as eligible for an MCC assistance programme, it must demonstrate a commitment to policies that promote political and economic freedom, investments in education and health, control of corruption, and respect for civil liberties and the rule of law.
It was on this last point that I am again disappointed by the PPP government. A government minister is alleged to have assaulted a teenager and discharged a firearm. This is clearly in breach of criminal law yet he is not arrested or charged with any offence because he came to some arrangement with the alleged victim. Is this what passes as upholding the rule of law?
Criminal acts are considered offences against the whole of a community. Responsibility for crime prevention, for bringing the culprits to justice and for dealing with convicted offenders is carried out by the state. How can the PPP government be trusted to properly carry out its mandated functions if it cannot even deal condignly with a minister within the cabinet.
The government will not even release his name. Why not? Is it because revealing his name is, as former Minister Ronald Gajraj once famously remarked ‘a matter of national security’? By the way his name has already been released in the US media particularly Hardbeat News, they’ve even published his picture!
Too often we are seeing that the law in Guyana is but a laughing stock as witnessed by the fiasco over the Chancellor/Chief Justice positions. Is Guyana now reduced to its own form of caste system where if you have got money and ‘Party’ connections you can make your eyes pass the law? Furthermore, a number of men have been implicated in serious criminal activities against young girls. Why aren’t these matters coming to court? Out of court settlements should never be used for such heinous crimes. The rule of law means nothing if justice is not seen to be done.
But then again the track record of this regime suggests to me that it is ‘Do as I say, not as I do.
Yours faithfully,
Colin Bascom
JIG (UK)
The Campaign for
Justice in Guyana