Dear Editor,
Guyana faces an existential threat not because of external aggression but from within its own borders. It has become increasingly clear that Guyana is a country not based on the rule of law but on the whim and fancy of those who govern this land. The vortex of crime accompanied by either the Jagdeo administration’s complicity on one hand or indifference and incompetence on the other hand, is sucking the life out of a dispirited and docile population.
I struggle with myself to find an answer as to why with all the direct, circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that abounds, a people who have been mistreated by successive governments would tolerate let alone accept a lack of candour and blatant disrespect from their elected officials. Then I realize that people get the type of leaders they deserve. If you allow self-serving politicians to come to your bottom house and constantly fill your head with fear, then you would be too busy to see that the PPP has not delivered on the security and prosperity they promised. You’re too busy to see that only the poor are getting poorer and those who can and leave by legal or illegal means have left or are leaving you to wallow in your fear.
I have yet to see this government accept responsibility for anything that has happened on their watch; it’s always someone else’s fault. GuySuCo loses $4 billion dollars and it’s an act of nature; large-scale drug trafficking; murder and mayhem; mysterious fires destroying the architectural fabric of the country (bad people who want to see the government fail and intellectual authors are at fault.)
When a permissive atmosphere, whether real or imagined, is allowed to continue, as a society you’re beyond the slippery slope. A known drug trafficker advertises in the local paper that he ‘helped’ the government fight the crime wave, and no one cared, it exposed the decaying moral compass of the nation. There are allegations that personnel from the GDF and GPF were involved in extra-judicial killings; then there are allegations of torture; there is Lindo Creek; then the collapse of CLICO; then theft inside Eve Leary under the Police Commissioner’s nose; another mysterious fire then members of the coast guard are charged with the murder of an innocent businessman. This is followed by the perfunctory outrage of PPP leaders who know who the intellectual authors are as well as who carried out the dastardly deeds but no one is arrested or evidence presented in a competent court of law and convictions obtained.
This begs the question, if all of these decadent things have happened under a duly elected government’s watch and the persons responsible for the respective sectors that have consistently failed to deliver security and deliver justice aren’t held accountable by their superiors or their constituents, why should the international community care? This fish is rotting from the head down.
Yours faithfully,
Nigel Jason
