Dear Editor,
Indigenous people, and many others of Guyana also, feel that there is something sacred about burial grounds and funerals. This applies to people of all beliefs and even to those without attachment to a religion. President Jagdeo is a notable exception. I say notable because there are of course those of us who get drunk and noisy on these occasions. I doubt that he gets drunk on drinking, but then there is power.
I do not know the President’s personal habits, so I do not include him in this noisy group. Two things strike me about the report of his last speech at Babu John cemetery at a memorial for two political pioneers of Guyana, Dr and Mrs Jagan. After he had spoken on the topic, it seems he “departed from his theme” and launched the election campaign
I am forced to recall his abuse of his own Hindu marriage ceremony, and a previous oration of his at the same Babu John cemetery, before the 2006 general elections. Taking together those cases and his recent oration, in which he targeted a presidential candidate, we can perhaps claim a pattern of similar conduct in these events. Does the President really respect these ceremonies and these sacred places? Or has he come to the belief that nothing in the society but his presidency is sacred?
Funerals should at least remind us that we all die. If he holds that his oration was privileged because of the occasion, why then were there spies at the late MP Murray’s funeral taping what speakers like Mr Greenidge felt called upon to say.
He attacked this presidential candidate in relation to the shooting of PPP supporters at the close of the 1973 elections. Yet he admitted giving orders as president to “shoot to kill” during the East Coast disturbances. The 1973 shooting was a perhaps a “shoot to kill” moment, which many, including ASCRIA, an African organisation, denounced at the time. I was, and I remain, against the shooting of unarmed civilians, except in cases of strict and established self-defence. The government in 1973 went through at least the form of a judicial enquiry into the shootings. Moreover, a President should be more cautious in applying collective guilt to an entire army, and criminalisng officers unless he knows that they gave the order or were present in a position of command. At the same time the President is unwilling to pronounce on the torture of young people by members of the security forces on his own watch as Commander in Chief and under his own nose.
President Jagdeo, despite calls from all sides, has refused to enquire into the Buxton-centred post-2002 disturbances, but he continues to boast of evidence at his disposal. Boasting about his videos is one thing. But at a law enforcement conference, addressing police personnel whose working material is evidence, President Jagdeo told them he would discuss security failings after leaving office.
Any rogue cops sitting in the audience must have felt very justified.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
