There will come a period soon when the turmoil and outrage over the massacre of the Lusignan 11 (L-11) will no longer be a cacophony, when a shadow of normality will descend on the lives of all of the aggrieved and when the heat on the government and the security forces would have dissipated. What then? What will be the posture and outlook of this government? Will it be business as usual until the next outrage?
If there is one thing that President Jagdeo will apprehend from this bestial massacre is that there is a genuine anger against his administration for failing to protect the country’s people – “my people” as he is given to saying – and an awareness among the citizenry that he has no viable ideas or will to transform the stultified crime fight.
So the ball is in President Jagdeo’s court. Will he continue the way he has for all the other crime outrages like the Agricola murders, the assassination of Minister Sawh and a host of other atrocities? Or will he change course radically? There are too many interrogatives already in this editorial but unfortunately the President’s avoiding of responsibility for effective measures against crime and his penchant for political points-scoring invite them.
His latest act of politicization was quite unfortunately on exhibition at the Lusignan funerals on Thursday. As noted in yesterday’s editorial when asked if he would engage the PNCR on the issue of crime and security he said this would not happen unless the party leaders publicly acknowledge that Buxton is a safe haven for criminals. He added: “Their ambivalence on this point puts to doubt the sincerity of their expressed condolences and of their support for the security forces”.
The PNCR’s ambivalence on Buxton has been a subject of discussion as far back as 2002. While their stance has been unhelpful and obstructionist it doesn’t mean that the party couldn’t be re-engaged immediately by the President on what should be done considering the extraordinary savagery of Lusignan. It doesn’t mean that the government is hamstrung in any way in taking the steps necessary to bring the Lusignan murderers to justice.
Crux
And that is the crux of the matter. The Jagdeo administration has aggrandized to itself in increasingly large doses all of the political space and control over major decisions. So much so that it trifles with the opposition and civil society where there is genuine need for consultation such as on the casino bill. It therefore has no one but itself to blame for the L-11 tragedy and the President is now the personification of his administration’s missteps.
If one were to look objectively at this present crisis the stunning failure of the President and his security apparatus is there for all to see.
A $50M reward has now been issued for the capture of Rondell Rawlins. However, this government and its police force have had at least five years to capture Mr Rawlins and bring him to justice for the multitude of crimes he has allegedly committed. He is not in outer space or in Falluja; he has apparently been entrenched in the backlands of an East Coast community all of this time. The PNCR didn’t prevent the government from finding him. No one stood in the way of the authorities finding him. The government and the police failed to do their duty.
This long playing litany about Buxton being a crime haven has gone on for too long. Since 2002 this problem has beset President Jagdeo and he has failed to do the job despite a multiplicity of military-led joint services operations. No one has stopped him from accomplishing this job. His security apparatus has failed to sufficiently win the confidence of residents of Buxton and Friendship and to garner the necessary intelligence.
As to the profusion of high-powered weaponry such as the ones used to commit the Lusignan murders, President Jagdeo has not presented a single workable proposal in his nine years as President to constrict the flow of weaponry to the criminal cartels.
These failures are glaring and they are likely to continue. The tendency of GINA and other apologists to imply that the President is blameless because he has given the police the resources to do the job impresses no one. The President exercises great authority over the police force and therefore their failings are his failings.
The present Operation Restore Order in Buxton comes across as an enforced response with no clear aim or intelligence-led basis. The police are trying their hardest to convince the populace of some measure of success by trumpeting that `Fineman’s’ number two has been killed. The truth is that no-one knows for sure what is transpiring in this community, least of all the police, and the pronouncements of the force have a fable-like quality which also pervades its regular churning out of ballistics information on seized weapons. The ballistics information serves only propaganda purposes as it is yet to be used evidentially in a major case or to secure a conviction in court.
It is now time for the President to deliver real progress in the fight against crime and there are many areas that he can choose from if he perused the Disciplined Forces Commission and Symonds reports and fast-tracked them.
Here are a few.
*The police force needs revamping from top to bottom and a reputable enforcement agency can easily be found to assist. The hiring of law enforcement officers from abroad must form part of this restructuring.
*The police and army badly need aerial support for their operations in the backlands. Helicopters can be leased or borrowed from Trinidad for instance.
*Considering that Buxton has been the epicentre of crime in that area there should be rapid response units at the ready on the east coast.
*There must be a 24-hour, hassle-free, first-call-gets-through communications system for the reporting of crimes to the police.
*Guns in the hands of criminals have to be soaked up and options such as amnesties will have to be considered.
*A concerted campaign has to be launched to smash the cocaine, backtracking, money-laundering and smuggling cartels which fuel a whole range of crimes.
The President might be tempted to sit back and hold the present course in the expectation that the unrest and vituperation directed at his administration will die down. There is however the prospect that the same incompetence which enabled `Fineman’ to remain on the loose could lead to other Lusignans. Is the President willing to take this risk?
