What Elections Do – And Can’t…
It’s already more than twenty years ago that a Bajan Soca Singer (Gabby?) had a popular tune with some lyrics saying “Guns Guns Everywhere… Dis one gat a gun, dat one gat a gun…” etc. Remember it, if you’re “old” enough?
And this is just my intro to a repetitive piece on the prevalence of illegal firearms in the hands of bandits and other Guyanese youth. Naturally, my concern is born out of the realization that too many peaceful citizens are becoming daily victims of these guns and I myself might one day be another innocent accidental target. I’m even charitable and broad-minded enough to state that even fellow-crooks should not be gunned down by their trigger happy “colleagues”. Those occurrences make Georgetown look like rivals to the early American Wild West – or today’s Jamaica.
So what is my perspective(s) today? Where am I coming from, or going to with this issue? Simply the following.
The availability reality
(Couriers caught with cocaine and ganja locally, seldom talk or sing, as they tend to do when in the United States jurisdiction and system. Locals fear harsh reprisals against them and their families. So too with suspects found with illegal, unlicenced weapons. They seldom reveal sources to law enforcement.)
Now, you and I have read and heard in editorials, police statements and conferences even from the knowledgeable Home Affairs Minister. Hundreds of small arms weaponry enter Guyana through porous borders from our three continental neighbours. This “intelligence” is both anecdotal and evidentiary, especially with regard to weapons–manufacturer Brazil and Corentyne-friendly Suriname whose gun-runners and other bandits seem to have strong effective alliances with Guyanese law-breakers. Other theories, sometimes evidence, point to ways and means guns are smuggled or merely brought into Guyana.
My enduring question, therefore, is: is our protective forces really incapable of mounting sustained continuous strategies to stem the supply and use of illegal small arms in this small society of ours? Just how much police work is needed? And how can the police get community co-operation – even from crooks – to even lessen gun crimes? Frankly speaking, I’ve never seen or heard of any special intensive anti-gun programme ever executed by our police force. So since I’m not police not professional criminologist or not intelligence special branch, I can only share, as a concerned vulnerable citizen, a few layman’s approaches.
Simple things daily – then …
Human rights and domestic freedoms. Privacy and its “invasion”. The law and needed legislation. Security vis-à-vis “rights”.
All the above come into focus if and when we address measures to confront the gun-crime issues. Can’t some personal rights be briefly suspended in the interest of personal and national security? Without a state of emergency?
Consider me at the old, now burnt-down, Metropole cinema about 45 years ago: I attended the 8:30pm “theatre”movies. Yes, I could only afford, in those sixties, to be in the Poor People’s Pit. Just as the last movie entered its final twenty minutes, management stopped the show and switched on bright lights!
A hastily-written sign on the screen informed that, in the interest of safety on Georgetown’s streets after midnight, the police wished to search patrons!
If you saw ice-picks, knives, screwdrivers, nails, masks, razors, two small cutlasses and such like on pit’s floor! What’s the lesson there?
Believe me, I can surrender my “right” to “privacy” to allow our police to do the following: to search at road blocks and cordons with more strategy than now employed; to intervene at parties, big public concerts and even well-to-do events to carry out personal searches; to intercept speed boats and ferry boats on water and at crossings and terminals to search; to utilize GPS technology to profile villages and communities to pinpoint safe places, safe havens and points of entry and exit which afford getaways, all of these matters are in the interest of the search for guns. The bad guys must know that the police are being relentless and continuous.
And couldn’t legislation be passed – if the laws are not there already – to empower magistrates and judges to jail guilty gun crimes accused to a minimum of five to eight years in jail? Do we not have hard labour on our law-books anymore? Drastic times demand drastic measures. What are your ideas to reduce local gun crimes? (They say amnesties won’t work here and I can’t muster enough respect for most Community Policing Groups.)
Elections can—and can’t
So general elections have thrown up new governments in the United Kingdom, Trinidad and Tobago and (possibly) Suriname.
That’s what election can do. They change governments if the procedures are fair and legal and reflect the people’s change of will. Elections best indicate how people feel after a certain, specific period. Elections represent one significant facet of a democracy, where citizens choose and change freely. Elections tell leaders how their followers feel.
But elections are no substitute for genuine, voluntary, charitable choices to serve – with no prompting, inducements or manifestoes. Elections cannot guarantee the winners’ integrity, sincerity to serve, their personal unimpeachable morality or their transparency six months after those elections are over. Elections cannot be a safeguard that campaign/manifesto promises will be kept – or even that coalitions will hold fast in the interest of the people and not only the government’s survival.
Our elections and the run up to them cannot seem to avoid divisiveness as the “leaders” campaign on race sometimes, and on personalities instead of issues, programmes and abilities. Here, opponents become enemies! In Dominica, St Lucia, Jamaica and America there are fierce but peaceful political rivals in one family. Poor us…
Just imagine…
1a) “More uranium” being found!? A Canadian company, the other ‘paper reports, has found significant traces of uranium on the banks of the Aricheng. Even before the Iranians arrive?
Before elections 2011: Uranium, Oil, Hydro-Electric dreams, Swimming Pool/Synthetic Track to Olympic standards, new hotels and interior roads; better hospitals and sharp salary increases in December! Beat that!
2b) Whatever happened to local government elections?
3c) Whether it’s the old New Amsterdam Hospital, the Botanic Gardens, the Bourda Cemetery, Castellani compound or City Hall – if the government guardians have no sense of aesthetics (because Janet Jagan passed), there is always the National Trust!
4d) The Sunday television doctor explained that prolonged overuse of Viagra can cause hearing loss! No wonder I have to keep repeating myself to two friends named “L”!
5e) Coming soon: 1) Please explain God to me (2) My own AFC Manifesto and (3) Comrade Odinga’s elections assignment(s)
‘Til next week!
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