Wednesday’s blitz by criminals against police stations, the Supreme Court of Judicature and a High School which left one man dead must be condemned in the strongest possible terms and the perpetrators brought to justice. This is easier said than done as it is in the realm of apprehension, interrogation, gathering of evidence, forensic investigation and prosecution that law enforcement has so abjectly failed over the last several decades.
The attacks drove home some bizarre and chilling truths about life in Guyana. First, whenever the government comes under intense pressure over its scandalous failures it seems to benefit from some outrageous attack which has the effect of deflecting attention from the serious issues before the public. When the government was being justifiably criticized over its poor handling of the CLICO (Guyana) crisis and the endangering of NIS funds attention shifted when the Commissioner of Insurance was wounded in a horrific shooting attack. This attack led to her migration and many unanswered questions but had the effect of diminishing the pressure on the government. This shooting is still to be solved.
The same thing occurred when the revelations from the Simels trial were putting the government and its Minister of Health under the blinding glare of allegations that they had facilitated the importation of spy equipment for Roger Khan and his subsequent training on its use. Lo and behold arsonists flattened the Ministry of Health. Again, the pendulum swung away from the pressure that had built over the Simels trial.
And now, under some of the most serious and sustained public criticism ever seen following the torture of a 15 year old while in police custody, the pressure threatens to ease over the attacks mounted on Wednesday. Indeed, President Jagdeo and other government spokesmen have made a case for the same amplitude of condemnation to be visited upon both the torture of the boy and the attacks.
These deflecting incidents are either remarkably coincidental or are the product of some other twisted plot.
Second, Wednesday’s attacks show how self-perpetuating the orgy of violence that the state itself has participated in has become. Literally hundreds of policemen, criminals, innocents, suspects, drug men, targets of hit-men, hit-men and drug dealers have been gunned down and butchered in many other ways since 2002 but yet the violence and mayhem continues unabated. It was this bloodletting sown by the 2002 prison escapees which led to death squads being organized. But even after they had mowed down the escapees, inflicted dozens of collateral-damage deaths and rent the fabric of society, the worst was yet to come: the `Fineman’ gang, Lusignan, Bartica and Lindo stand out. And now this latest attack which will need the detecting equivalent of the Rosetta stone to be understood and solved. The moral of this tale must be that violence and the violent words that have streamed from the mouths of the President and his security officials are no solution to the serious crime scourge that is plaguing the country. Indeed, it can be argued that it is this exact inflamed language that is leading to a `dumbing down’ of policing and the accentuating of brutality like that which gripped the Leonora police station two weeks ago.
Third, the Wednesday attack shows how vulnerable the state remains to well-armed and well-organised criminals and how the security apparatus of the state has comprehensively failed to anticipate these gangs and gather actionable intelligence. It also illustrates how incapable the security forces are of reacting nimbly and catching the marauders while the trail is still warm. In this case, upwards of eight men raked the barracks of the principal police station in the heart of the city on Brickdam, moved on to an outpost in Ruimveldt and in between they or some of their cohorts set fire to the registry of the supreme court, lit fires in eight places at the Richard Ishmael Secondary and descended upon an `Island’ family and after failing to recruit a past acquaintance for their nefarious deeds gave him a sound thrashing and reportedly fired bullets at him while he was escaping. This all happened without the supposedly battle-hardened police coming anywhere near the attackers. The police response was limited to one of their old stomping grounds – Agricola but they came up empty handed. If the criminals could make a clean getaway like this which individual or institution can be safe? Which sensible government in these circumstances can afford to forfeit well-targeted and professional security assistance from the UK as was just recently the case with the Security Sector Reform Project?
Fourth, it must be that the police and the government perceive the public to be the most gullible and lobotomized nitwits ever spoken to. The public is now led to believe that a Toyota Tacoma was hijacked on the Linden/Soesdyke Highway, crewed by the attackers, driven pell-mell to Georgetown and then used to launch all of the attacks referred to above. Mission accomplished, the Tacoma then retraces its steps along the Linden/Soesdyke Highway and then somewhere near Millie’s Hideout it is burnt – a la Lindo Creek so that any incriminating evidence can be obliterated. The average village granny would do a far better job at coming up with more plausible scenarios. It is either that the attackers are the luckiest men on the face of this earth or that the police are the most incompetent – or shades of the two.
The public is also led to believe that in the heat of the attacks two suspects are recognized or that a person who was set upon that night was confident enough in the police to confide in them the identities of two of the men. Strange. Exceedingly strange.
Even more risible, is that the two suspects identified – Thierens and Jones – had already had a starring role in another police bungling – their escape from the Providence lockups after being held in the Health Ministry fire probe. Not only does this expose the corruption and incompetence in the police force it also begs the very important question of how the police managed not to apprehend Thierens and Jones over the three months that they were on the lam.
And now from the President we are told that the mastermind of the Wednesday attack is in the US and the telephone number associated with him had been cropping up since the period when Buxton was notorious. Well, who is responsible for the person not being apprehended over a period presumably going back to 2002? That would be the government and police. This sounds suspiciously like the other supposedly incriminating evidence that President Jagdeo said he had in relation to collaborators with the then Buxton-based criminals but which has never entered the public domain and which fact he unconvincingly excused by saying that he did not want to compromise his sources. Can President Jagdeo provide details on his various formal requests to the US for assistance in this latest mastermind matter? President Jagdeo has this uncanny knack of deciphering big mysteries but has complete blind spots in relation to more apparent ones such as Roger Khan’s captaining of the drug trade here for many years and leading a murderous campaign against rivals and criminals.
After a decade of the Jagdeo Presidency and the chronic and comprehensive failures he and his security apparatus have presided over, it cannot be any clearer now to the public that the old methods will not work and that the recent plotting by the government against the UK plan further jeopardizes the security and safety of the state and leaves it and its people at the mercy of events like Wednesday morning’s.
It also doesn’t help that civil society in the main has been reduced to cheerleading for President Jagdeo even though he has to be held personally responsible for the dire state of insecurity – witness the sycophancy that oozes from recent Private Sector Commission statements and events. Poor, compromised and criminalized governance has been matched with a hapless, self-interested civil society all to the detriment of Guyana and its long-suffering people.
