Dear Editor,
When the PPP ascended to power in 1992, it promised the Guyanese people and its main supporting constituency of Indians that it would secure them and guarantee their safety and security. In the ensuing 19 years, this promise has not only been broken, it has been completely erased by the PPP. This country has become a cauldron of all-out fear and insecurity. Crimes of poverty and inequality have skyrocketed. Crimes of opportunity have multiplied. The unstoppable flow of illegal guns has made the gun another route to the top. Crimes of corruption, graft, fraud, embezzlement and outright thievery in high places make the PNC look like altar boys.
Guyana is a criminal haven. If you have a criminal mind, you can do well in this country. When a government does absolutely nothing of substance to fight the rise and dominance of criminal networks, underground crime syndicates and drug cartels, the people pay the price. You cannot ever allow criminals to dominate a country and not reap the sorrows. The PPP’s failure to protect Guyanese and also its predominantly Indian-Guyanese supporters from the onslaught of crime is rooted in the disregard in which it holds those who religiously vote for them. It is the same disrespect the PNC showed to its supporters.
Despite millions in aid available if the PPP government allows foreign help this country desperately needs to get back on track in the fight against crime, it refuses to allow those with better resources to fight crime in Guyana. When a government is incapable of protecting its citizens after a drug war goes political and those citizens are being killed, it is a drug kingpin who does the crime-fighting. When a government cannot secure prisons to prevent outbreaks that wreak havoc on the general population, it cannot protect anyone.
However, the Pradoville mansions are protected and heavily guarded. When a government does nothing as guns freely enter this country, it must stand helpless when Guyanese are being murdered by these same guns. When drugs are flowing on the streets of this country taking the innocence and promise of our youth in a wave of addiction, we get another army of addicts willing to steal, beg and murder for the next fix.
If a man can steal from the state without reprimand, he will see nothing wrong in stealing from others, nothing wrong in committing other crimes and nothing wrong in some others benefiting from crime. Those with nothing but hunger in their stomachs and nothing to lose see this country as full of opportunity to profit from crime. It surrounds them and occurs in high places in this land.
Drug cartels, gun smuggling networks, prostitution rings, human trafficking syndicates, fuel smugglers and blatant thievery and corruption have not made this country safer. Building a nation where more guns are more available to criminals and where high unemployment afflicts our youth is playing with fire, and if you play with fire you get burnt. Come October, some will appear with their message of fear. But they will not tell the people of this nation how this fear came about.
As hard as some try to spin this problem of crime in a discoloured paradigm of race, this problem transcends race. It is a cause and effect problem. It is an opportunistic problem. It is a mindset problem. There are different types of crime in this country but they are still crimes. Those who at one time prided themselves on staying away from crime and branded others brigands and criminals are now some of the biggest criminals in this country.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
