Dear Editor,
I refer to your front page of February 1, where the main one on the left declares for all to see “Law and order at ‘optimal level.’” Under this declaration is the blurb, “There is no breakdown of law and order in Guyana. I am not saying that because I am Minister of Home Affairs. I am saying that because like you and like everyone over here we live in this country and we can walk around this country, we can work, we can have fun. We can have leisure; we can do all we want to do in this country without looking over our shoulders as we used to do prior to 1992…”
To the right of this confident declaration by our Minister is the photograph of Charles Caesar, and below his photograph is the caption, “Albouystown driver was shot dead minutes after hired…”
Below that on the lower right of the front page is the headline, “Two shot in Grove robbery.”
To the right of that are the photographs of two men, and these are captioned, “Two die in accidents…”
So there is Mr Rohee’s confident declaration of optimal levels of security and three people – one killed and two shot – on the same front page in a country of around 700,000 people. No one knows for sure how many people are in Guyana, since we do ‘junk economics’ in this country, and since Gecom is saying that 90,000 ID cards remain uncollected we have to assume that these people are not in Guyana. I am therefore saying that it is my firm belief that there are only around 700,000 people in this country today.
But to go back to the front page of the Feb 1 Stabroek News, which is a sort of microcosm of the country today with optimal “law and order.” We pursue these stories inside the paper; on page 12, nearly the entire page is taken up with Mr Rohee’s statement assuring us that everything is optimal, but the only other story on the page in the lower left corner is a story telling us that “David St man admits trafficking in cocaine, ganja charges.”
The top of page 10 is occupied with the death of poor Mr Caesar who was shot dead at Perry Street; just below this story is the headline, “Man stabbed after drink request refused,” and on the lower right hand of this same page we see a story of a “Hire car driver charged with teen rape.”
On page 19 where the story of the two people who were shot in the Grove robbery is located, we are informed that 5 gunmen beat and shot two Guyanese, Hansel Alleyne and Horace Cupidore, both of whom are in hospital – one in critical condition and on oxygen. Clearly these two poor men – and my sympathies go out to their families – were in the home of Alleyne when it was invaded by the 5 armed robbers.
As far as the two men who were killed in accidents are concerned, poor Mr David Yacuba, a mason from Plaisance, was struck down by a hire car on the Better Hope public road on Sunday’ reports by the witnesses suggest that the driver was speeding and intoxicated. Drunk and speeding Mr Rohee? He leaves a wife and 6 children to fend for themselves.
In the second accident, 62-year-old Mr Chandradat Ghanraj from No 9 Village West Coast Berbice was hit by a minibus which was clearly speeding, since after hitting poor Mr Ghanraj the minibus spun several times before it rolled over, coming to a stop on its side in the yard of a vacant house – remember my estimate that there are only 700,000 people now living in this country? ‘Darro’ as Mr Ghanraj was called, leaves his wife and 10 dependent grandchildren to fend for themselves.
Drunken, speeding drivers, armed bandits, hitmen shooting taxi-drivers, drug runnings – anyone remember one newspaper filled with stuff like this in 1992? Optimal, my foot Clement!
Yours faithfully,
Tony Vieira
