Dear Editor,
It was with interest I read your editorial ‘The cold, cold truth’ (SN 23.2.09). To the names you printed representing those murders that may never be solved I would add that of Marcyn King.
The assassinations of Ronald Waddell as well of Marcyn King in particular appear to be crimes that will never be solved. Also those two had the trappings of a professional hit job, as they both seemed to involve some car speeding away from the scene. It is those execution-type killings, the revenge or political hits that look to me as if they never seem to get aggressively followed up on.
The government doesn’t seem to have the appetite for solving any of these crimes. It is indicating that the authorities are as you say “unmoved,” that months after DNA samples from the Lindo Creek massacres were sent to a Jamaican lab no results have been forthcoming. And now the police commissioner insouciantly comes out with the excuse that the Jamaicans have their hands full with murder cases of their own so they are not able to process the Lindo Creek DNA in a timely fashion. Didn’t the government know this when they turned down the British offer to assist with the DNA soon after the Americans refused the job? Apparently the government feels no pressure to resolve these cases. Why should they? They are all but assured of victory after victory for elections to come. In fact, with the current political landscape as it is I cannot see another party coming to power besides the PPP for decades. So all these things could be swept under the rug and kept there. No new administration will step in to uncover anything.
Ironically enough, the only possible breakthrough in many of these cases may yet come out of the US during the course of the high-profile drug conspiracy trial getting on the way in a New York federal courthouse. From the looks of things that trial could well yield just the kind of information that could compel a reluctant administration to formally follow up on certain leads. The current ruling party in Guyana is obviously able to run roughshod over the opposition whose tepid and feckless stance on these and other issues all but assures the PPP of continuous victory. And of course, regardless of how much we might want to deny it, ethnic voting in Guyana is here to stay. To this end, only a truth and reconciliation exercise might come remotely close to resolving some of those murders you mentioned, and that seems highly unlikely to come about.
Yours faithfully,
Stafford Wills
