Dear Editor,
Owing to the fact that most Guyanese have a short memory span, and would rather remain in denial and refuse to view the larger picture; we have failed to connect the events of the last few years; unfortunately the actuation of most those events was not by chance but rather the tell signs of things to come.
Which are as follows:-
Missing guns from the army, jail breaks, police killings and compromised confidential communication, high profile killings, parallel powers, Para territories those which appear to be under the control of non state actors, gun running, narco-trafficking, counterfeit money, trafficking in persons, immigration and passport racket, counterfeit government of Guyana official documents of all kind, gun smuggling, the sale of guns in urban areas at affordable prices, diamond and gold smuggling, acrimony in the trade unions, and adversarial politics; Oh what a combustible mix!
The above points to the presence of an endemic known as organized crime, in addition to the above named; it involves corrupt government officials, business persons, and members of the public who have been initiated into a process often without consent or prior knowledge.
It involves the presence of localized gangs, the inputs of transnational criminal organizations and the activities of syndicates that do best what the government, opposition and trade unions have failed to do so far, that is “they draw on their collective strengths” to spread terror, render the social space chaotic and ungovernable so that they could fulfill their criminal objectives unimpeded.
We do not need foreign experts to tell us that the training of public safety officials needs to be improved. Nor that the police and army need to establish a proper dog training programme. We are aware of the virtues of a SWAT team, intelligence, emergency planning, search and rescue, and the introduction of special units for juveniles and gang activities etc; and the fact that we ought to have a Para- military police to act as a third force between the police and the army.
What the foreigners might tell us is that we have taken much too long to act on those very tell signs we have been ignoring.
Yours faithfully,
Clairmont Featherstone
