After nearly a decade of dangerous descent into disorder, drug-gang warfare and criminal violence, has Guyana started to move back onto the high road to public safety, security and stability?
Despite the Guyana Police Force’s shambolic and bloody jungle operation against armed bandits, and the persistence of riverine piracy, rural armed robberies, rapes, murders and fatal road accidents, there is a little light at the end of the dismal tunnel of lawlessness. The crime and security situation seems less dire than it was in the heyday of the troubles on the East Coast five years ago and there are certain signs that things may actually be moving in the right direction.
Hardly a month has passed this year without the handing over of modern equipment by the British High Commissioner to the Police Commissioner or of a visit from British security advisers and experts to train members of the police force. As a result, the police force’s most important enforcement arms are being re-equipped and, in some cases, re-trained.
The British have installed a data processing and management computer system at Force Control, the ‘brain’ of police operations at the headquarters in Eve Leary. Computers, telephones and office furniture were given to the operations room at the headquarters of Police ‘A’ Division which has responsibility for the national capital, international airport and seaport, and the troublesome roadway between them. Binoculars and cameras have helped the newly-expanded crime intelligence unit which has also been re-equipped with computers and other office equipment. GPS navigation and night-vision equipment has been supplied to the Tactical Service Unit. Consultants have come to advise on crime intelligence and to provide training for the crime intelligence unit, and much more.
The present surge in police force reform started with the signing of a ₤3M interim memorandum of understanding for security sector reform by Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon and British High Commissioner Mr Fraser Wheeler in August last year.
On the Guyanese side, and in accordance with the memorandum, the government introduced a motion in the National Assembly on the British-drafted Security Sector Reform Action Plan 2007-2011 which was approved on November 1, 2007. The motion also provided for the establishment of special select committees to monitor the implementation of the British plan and to review Guyana’s own four-year-old report of the Disciplined Forces Commission. In addition, in the aftermath of the Lusignan and Bartica atrocities, the administration hastily convened a select stakeholder forum which demanded that a parliamentary standing committee on crime and security be established. There should now be three parliamentary sub-committees dealing with the security sector.
But, at the best of times, the pace of parliamentary activities in this country is plodding. Ministers are busy; meetings are sporadic; sessions are short. As a result, the Guyanese supervisory side of security sector reform has not been keeping abreast of the British delivery side of equipment and training. It was expected that ten months after the signing of the memorandum, the administration would have been moving apace to implement other important aspects of the plan. These include making policy-making across the security sector more transparent, creating substantial parliamentary and other oversight of the security sector, and building greater public participation and inclusiveness on security sector issues. But parliamentary performance has been sub-optimal.
In an attempt to speed up the process, the British High Commissioner wrote to Prime Minister Mr Samuel Hinds, who is the chairman of the select committees, all of four months ago, indicating his availability to conduct briefings on current developments in the implementation of the Security Sector Reform Action Plan. Parliamentary procrastination prevails, however, though it has not yet visibly impaired the practical implementation side of the reform programme.
For the first time in a decade, the administration has taken serious steps with British support to introduce real security sector reform in order to address the chronic crime challenges facing the country. But, in order to ensure that the plan stays on course, to encourage popular support for police efforts at law enforcement and to prevent the recurrence of human rights abuses, the National Assembly’s select committees need to be put quickly under more energetic management.