In a meeting with the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry on February 27, the Minister of Home Affairs is reported as having said that the private sector will participate in the selection of 10 civilians to oversee sweeping police reforms that were announced on December 31st last year.
This meeting was a welcome one on two counts. First, it showed that the ministry is receptive to approaches by the business community concerned at crime. Second, the announcement of intended private sector participation in the selections is a good sign as room is being made for civil society in what tends to be purely governmental decisions.
There should be no mistaking the importance of what is at stake in these reforms. Belatedly, the ministry is trying to push through a series of changes that really needed adequate sequencing to ensure they have full impact and suffuse every part of the security sector.
Civilian oversight of reforms is a welcome departure from what has existed for decades but whether it will work is a function of how quickly the old bad ways of the police force can be cast out. In the best of times police accountability has always been at question. More so the matter of to whom it is really accountable and to whom it is really answering.
For these reasons neither the Ministry nor the private sector – in this case here, the Georgetown Chamber – can ignore the importance of getting this process right. Minister Rohee’s credibility is definitely on the line considering all that has recently transpired and his long tenure amid rampant crime. He, more than anyone else, should be acutely aware of the need to avoid missteps. The real problem is that the Minister has to convince the general public that he and his government are intent on permitting competent, credible and independent-minded members of civil society to undertake this critical, ground-breaking and experimental step. The public is very accustomed to the government parachuting its favoured ones into all sorts of places and areas that they are completely unsuited to for the purpose of rewarding good comradeship. This is what has to be avoided most studiously and as such the private sector itself must ensure that whatever it participates in isn’t intended to provide cover for the government.
We have called before in these columns for the selection of the 10 to be done in a professional and transparent manner. It will signal how serious the government is about fundamental reform and changing its culture of command and control. While advertisements have been placed inviting applications for the civilian positions, the public is unaware of what specific requirements are attached to the post in terms of skills and qualifications, who sits on the selection panel and whether there is any veto power. How exactly the `private sector’ will fit into this process and who exactly from its constituents will be involved in the selections should also be clarified by both the government and the private sector.
The Wolfe Commission of Inquiry into the Linden shootings made an important point about the public’s perception of the police force.
It said: “We got the feeling that a significant number of persons who testified view the police cynically as agents of the government acting solely in the interest of the government and by extension the political party forming the administration.
There was no concrete evidence before us to substantiate that view but it is said that perception is nine-tenths of reality. This view can only be changed if there is an insistence on the highest professional behaviour on the part of the police and the government demonstrates that politics and policing cannot be compatible bedfellows. There is nothing more debilitating to proper policing than having political considerations or allegiance influencing the decisions and behaviour of the police to a particular segment of the society which is known or perceived to be antagonistic to a political persuasion. All Guyanese regardless of their political persuasion are entitled to equal treatment under the Constitution and ordinary law of the country. Our observations are intended to deal with the perception and our urging is that the perception be not ignored but that urgent steps be taken to deal with it as if it were a reality.”
Dealing with that unfortunate perception and the reality is what the government and the private sector should be alive to. They must recognize that transparency and evenhandedness in new reforms are non-negotiable.
There was another aspect of the ministry’s account of the meeting with the Chamber that raised red flags. The Chamber pointed out its concerns about crime and the ministry’s response, according to the statement that it issued, was to remind the Chamber “that it is difficult to control perceptions on crime, particularly, in democracies where there are so many freedoms, and politically-aligned media houses, which promote the interests of political parties, as in Guyana.
“It was acknowledged that due to perceptions it would appear that crime is on the increase, because of the way in which incidents of crime are reported in some sections of the media.” This statement was a clear denial that crime is on the upswing and it must mean that the ministry is completely out of touch with what is happening on the ground. It may not be the days of the prison break quintet/`Fineman’/Roger Khan but there is clearly a big problem when execution-style killings are carried out with impunity without anyone being arrested and the drug lords have their way. Two weeks after a major cocaine find in timber which would have taken many hands to put together there is still no charge against anyone. Armed robberies continue unabated and the interior is rife with a lethal cocktail of murder, drugs, corruption, gold smuggling and other illegalities that threaten to further undermine the centre and the weak law and order system. In this instance it is not about perceptions at all. It is the reality. The sooner the ministry accepts, the greater the chances of an honest engagement with civil society stakeholders.