Dear Editor,
My colleague who is a pre-eminent member of a very visible local NGO was boasting of his attendance at the Office of the President, as one of the invited Stakeholders to the Consultation held some weeks ago on national security. When asked what was his contribution as representing that NGO’s position, his response was that he had nothing to say.
I have reflected on his eloquent silence ever since, and wondered to what extent it represented the contribution of other stakeholders present. It made me ponder on whether a matter of such urgency and proportions should have been restricted to a list of invitees, a process which implied the exclusion of some interests (and expert) groups whose insights may well have been relevant. Given the breadth and depth of the issues intricated in the security and stability of this nation, was it enough to confine the dialogue to the office of the Commander-in-Chief?
Was not an outreach programme a potentially better alternative? To what extent were the communities affected (including Buxton) involved in what was considered to be a constructive dialogue. Again, given the psycho-sociological implications identified by some analysts, were all the relevant institutions and/or persons on the stakeholder guest list?
Conceivably there will be a long term approach to addressing not only the need for remedial security action, but equally, if not more importantly, the priority of preventing crime and containing behaviours which lead to the instability which fundamentally undermines our daily lives. Should not therefore the educational institutions, including UG in particular, not be part of research programmes to study and analyse the perceived contributory factors to anti-social behaviours, with the Ministry of Human Services collaborating in the implementation of such a programme?
Not irrelevantly the investigation may unearth information that may be useful to the hitherto uninformed and misinformed debate about ‘marginalisation’, and the potential relevance to the anti-social, including criminal, behaviour which has become so endemic in our communities.
It would not be stretching a point if it were recognised, for example, that denying students access to education through the Critchlow Labour College (which must certainly have human rights implications) may well contribute to a cauldron of resentment that may lead to wider commitment to deviant acts by another group of frustrated youth.
It is certain that when one considers the impact on their individual future – their inability to qualify for jobs, or to be rendered ineligible for entry to higher levels of learning, it would be no surprise that emotions will overflow onto the families and relatives who are, and may be potential dependents of those ‘citizens’ of Guyana.
What is the morality, and indeed logic, by which it can be argued that the greater issue of the development of a portion of our human resource capacity (while at the same time bemoaning the migration of that capacity) should be relegated to the comparatively minor and frivolous plane of a political dispute amongst emasculated trade unions.
In any case by what constitutional process does the administration at the highest level get involved in a professed Trade Union dispute?
This explicit degradation of the rights and dignity of our citizenry can only redound to the proportionate diminution of the integrity of its perpetrators, and of course of the silent witnesses, some of whom incidentally also describe themselves as leaders.
They however should reflect on how much their self-serving silence contributes to the fuelling of the very unstable behaviours which they complain as rendering them vulnerable and insecure. For what do these righteous people pray in their respective steepled and domed establishments?
Yours faithfully,
Eliah Bijay
