In our edition last Tuesday we carried a report saying that the photos of six men wanted by the police in connection with the Lusignan and Bartica killings had not been released by the police force to Stabroek News despite the fact that they had been carried in the February 23 edition of the Guyana Chronicle, as well as in the Kaieteur News the following day. When this newspaper asked the Police Public Relations Office both about the photographs and an accompanying press release, it said it was unaware of either. Stabroek News then requested GPF Press and Public Relations Officer Ivelaw Whittaker to give an explanation for this, but he responded with a “no comment.” As for the army, it simply referred the paper back to the police.
That same evening the Government Information Agency (GINA) admitted that it had released the photos, claiming furthermore – as we reported in our Wednesday edition – that its records showed the “photographs were indeed electronically sent to the newspaper [SN] at 11.57 pm on February 22, 2008.” This confident assertion notwithstanding, we have to say we have absolutely no record of receiving them, added to which as we subsequently learnt, Capitol News did not receive them either. In a comment published in the same report, Stabroek News’s Daily Editor Anand Persaud adverted to the fact that this is not the first time GINA had discriminated in the issuing of press releases, and that he had complained about it in the past. We have since received the photographs, but that is days after they first appeared in the Chronicle, and only after we went public with the issue.
There is something else as well. On Wednesday Mr Persaud raised the matter of GINA releasing photos purportedly on behalf of the police, when the latter appeared to have been taken completely off guard by this and seemed not to know just what the source of the images’ distribution was. Inevitably one has to ask, therefore, why GINA is usurping the function of the Police Public Relations Office, more especially when part of the British-funded Security Sector Reform Action Programme (SSRAP) concerns police-media relations.
It might be mentioned that in our first report on this issue the Daily Editor had also made reference to the recurring problem of the selective release of information by the police/Joint Services themselves to media houses, something which appeared to occur at a level above the Police Public Relations Office. He had gone on to say the problem had been raised recently with UK advisor Mr John Beverly, who had come here to work with the police on media relations, and who had held a two-day seminar involving journalists and the police. Obviously that part of the project has not yet produced any appreciable improvement where police professionalism is concerned.
The reason for this, of course, is no mystery to anyone in this country; it can be attributed to political interference, either direct or indirect, or the timidity which afflicts those who are conscious they are functioning in a political context. In short, it is a consequence of the politicization of the police force, and the manipulation of public information for political ends. As such, selected media houses which are perceived to adopt a critical stance towards the government or the modus operandi of the police, or both can sometimes be excluded.
The politicization of the police force has inevitably been accompanied by its de-professionalization. The problem has its provenance in PNC times, but it has accelerated dramatically since 1992. Nervous of the African dominated disciplined forces, the government adopted the strategy of starving them of modern equipment, undermining their hierarchical structures, and in the case of the police, working with selected senior officers and units which would accept political direction. The administration has also demonstrated a high level of tolerance for extra-judicial methods and even corruption among trusted elements despite it being brought to its attention.
The attempts to achieve a sense of security have led the ruling party in directions which paradoxically have produced the opposite result from the one desired. In the process, of course, they have made everyone insecure, more especially their own constituency. The crime crisis of 2002-03 persuaded the administration to begin equipping both the GPF and the GDF rather better, although it has taken Lusignan and Bartica to convince it of the desperate need for air surveillance.
One might have thought the government would have learnt its lesson with the experience of the notorious ‘Black Clothes’ police and its extra-judicial methods, not to mention the shadowy death squads and their criminal connections which emerged six years ago, but now we have allegations of torture against the Joint Services. True to form, the administration has shown no inclination to take those accusations seriously, any more than it has shown an interest in insisting on a professional approach in search operations on the East Coast. Judging from the phantom letters which appear in the state-owned newspaper impugning the motives of those who raise questions about police and army methods, the government is still disinclined to abandon its preference for short-cut approaches.
So here we have the SSRAP with its equipment and trainers and objective of professionalizing the police force. How successful that project will be is dependent in the first instance on the preparedness of the government to take a different approach to the Joint Services, and to allow them actually to function professionally. There are other things too which could impede the professionalization process, some of which have been raised at the President’s consultations with the political parties and civil society, but recognizing that politics and professionalism don’t mix in a police force is a crucial starting point.
From what happened last week in one small area of the SSRAP, namely police-media relations, it is not unreasonable to conclude that politics still holds pre-eminence over professionalism in the security sector of this country.
