Dear Editor,
The case of now-fired police superintendent, Mr Simon McBean, has to go down in political history as one of the most stupid and uncaring decisions I have seen in Guyana. There isn’t anything left for the Jagdeo administration to do to convince me it is completely unhinged from reality, reasonableness and responsibility. To this administration, if you are not politically connected, you are on your own, and it harkens back to the dreaded Forbes Burnham era, when Burnham was the ultimate decider of all matters pertaining to the government and its secondary institutions.
I honestly cannot condone the method used by Mr McBean in taking a scholarship offered by Britain to pursue advanced studies in policing, because protocol says he was supposed to obtain permission from the Guyana Police Force, which meant he could still have been paid while overseas. Failing that, his next option was to take an unpaid leave of absence. A third option, which would not have made sense if he planned on returning to serve Guyana, was to resign and still pursue the scholarship.
To the shock of many of us who read his story, and assuming we read the entire story correctly, here is a senior police officer who apparently took a personal, as opposed to an official, leave of absence from his job to pursue a scholarship offered by the British, and even if the Guyana Police Force did not grant him official leave of absence, he had to come to the conclusion at some point early in his time in Britain that the GPF and the government were not against his decision.
This was borne out in the fact that for the duration of his overseas stay, he kept going into the Guyana Mission in London and presenting sick leave documents and no one in the GPF, including the Commissioner, ever stopped to question why he kept presenting sick leave request papers, and why the force, in turn, kept honouring the papers by ensuring he kept getting paid.
How could the Police Commissioner and his immediate subordinates not know this deal was in place? In fact, considering this man was away from his job for one year and still got paid, how could the GPF not be held culpable for aiding and abetting this man’s decision that led to his eventual dismissal after approving his sick leave requests and paying him? How can a senior police officer go on extended leave of absence from his job to pursue an overseas training programme and senior government officials not know?
I recall the story of ex-army major David Clarke who was on a training programme in the United States when the President received word that this officer was intricately linked to the Buxton criminal gang, and the President acted immediately to have him cut short his training and return to Guyana. The point here is that cases of senior police and military officers going on overseas training programmes while still on the payroll have to be known by somebody high up the chain of command in the police or defence force, and because the President is the Commander-in-Chief of the Joint Services, he is supposed to be apprised when a senior uniformed officer leaves the country on a training programme.
The move by the Police Service Commission to have Mr McBean dismissed, therefore, has little to do with the fact he left his job and went on a scholarship overseas without permission from the Guyana Police Force, and much to do with the small-minded and vindictive politics that characterize the administration.
True, no one can afford to be on sick leave for a year and get paid by taxpayers when all concerned know the person and also know the person is not really sick, but on a scholarship. It sets a bad precedent, assuming one never existed, and should be discouraged based on practical steps in the disciplinary process. But Mr McBean should not be the only one getting axed, if axing was the best course of action government deemed necessary, because Mr McBean did not pay himself for one year. Had this government an iota of humanity in its being, it could have at least demanded Mr McBean repay the monies he received, either lump sum or via a monthly deduction process, and still retain him for his expertise. But this government does not care about people as much as it cares about its self-serving politics.
So why would the government back the Police Service Commis-sion’s decision to fire Mr McBean? Could it be straight-up vindictive politics? On the one hand, Mr McBean was offered a scholarship to study policing in Britain and he got paid while he was overseas. On the other hand, the same Britain availed some money to Guyana for police reforms and may have included as part of the deal that British personnel be stationed in Guyana to work alongside their local counterparts. The government reacted angrily stating that this would be tantamount to compromising Guyana’s sovereignty, and while I don’t know what the status of that reformation exercise is, I wouldn’t put it past this government to use the firing of Mr McBean to send a message to the British that Guyana doesn’t need any British-trained personnel working in Guyana’s police force.
The problem is that Guyana needs all the police expertise it can get to deal with myriad crimes, including corruption in government, money laundering, drug smuggling, and the most dangerous types we read about almost daily, so why engage in petty politics at the expense of the police force’s needs? On top of that, I don’t know if Mr McBean has a family, and if he does, one has to ask whether there is no one left in this government who could ignore this pettiness and see that this man has a family to take care of. No wonder Guyanese are fleeing to other countries: their government does not care about them; only itself!
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
