Had Mr Bharrat Jagdeo not been president, and had the security situation not been so severe, his utterances on the recent cataclysmic criminal events might have been ignored. But the president is a person of power and authority. When he speaks, his remarks are reported far and wide in foreign countries. More than anyone else’s, his words influence international perceptions of public safety in Guyana. What he says cannot be dismissed as meaningless, even by non-supporters of the administration.
Mr Jagdeo’s counter-crime strategy over the years has failed to solve this country’s simmering security crisis. Bad turned decidedly worse with the bloody massacres at Lusignan and Bartica in January and February. So far, as with the La Bonne Intention massacre of April 2006, the police have brought charges for the crimes against only one waif although the evidence suggests that very large gangs of gunmen had been involved in the killings. To most people, much is still not known about the motivation and organisation of the criminal gangs.
The absence of convincing evidence about these events and the police force’s failure to prosecute the criminals have been frustrating enough to the frightened families. Society at large is fatigued by scores of unsolved murders over the years and fearful that there is no end in sight. In such a situation, solid information has given way to airy speculation. Logical explanation has been replaced by the facile certitude of comments which seem not to be supported by available evidence.
The day after the Lusignan massacre, for example, the president went on record as saying that the murders might have been a diversion from the investigations into the recent revelation that weapons issued to the Ministry of National Development during the 1970s were not returned to the Guyana Defence Force. He said that “these acts are designed to take the focus away from that investigation.” Can the avoidance of an investigation be a plausible explanation for such an atrocity?
After the Bartica massacre, the president told residents: “We know it is the same group that did it in Lusignan.” The president had made a similar astounding pronouncement in May 2006 in the wake of the assassination of a government minister when he told residents of West Berbice: “We know who killed him.” The next week, however, Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Luncheon was obliged to explain that the president’s words did not mean that he could actually identify the persons who planned and executed the crime.
Now, it seems, Dr Cheddi Jagan’s venerable memorial at Babu John has become a rostrum for recrimination. Referring to the theft of assault rifles from the Guyana Defence Force while addressing a commemoration ceremony for Dr Jagan’s ninth death anniversary in March 2006, the president baldly stated: “I want you to know that the same people who have to steal the guns now would be given the guns if the government changes. The people who have to steal the guns today would be given the guns because they are in close bed with some of the elements in the opposition.” Now, does he have evidence of this?
At another ceremony to mark President Jagan’s eleventh death anniversary earlier this month, also at Babu John, the president declared that those opposing his administration had suggested that the Lusignan and Bartica massacres would not have taken place if there was power-sharing. According to the Government Information Agency, the president’s interpretation was that power sharing was simply a stratagem: “a backdoor way to political power for those who don’t want to face elections.”
In the same oration, the president accused his critics of being willing to “jump on any hardship that people have to swerve it to suit their political end. Many times, I think about them as vultures, as carrion crows