Dear Editor,
I understand that there are some severe differences of opinions and positions about the utility and possible validity of the hailed Argentine team of forensic experts.
Regardless of who thinks what (if they think at all), and who says what, which would be the usual powerful partisan mouthfuls, I think that the Argentine team of experts is needed here and now. I recommend strongly. Now who on the objecting side cares to listen to that, to that which has already been concluded to be hostile and dangerous to interests. I think and recommend the Argentine group for the simplest of reasons: it offers the best current known and available option.
Moreover, if we say – whichever local political group and leader(s) – that we are serious and genuine and truly want to get to the bottom, the real bottom, of the gruesome Cotton Tree killings, then we cannot be otherwise. No political group or political leader should play games and beat around the bush for not only timely and proper justice for victims and families of the mutilated victims, which is of the highest priority; but to explore and grasp the fullness of the underpinnings and linkages to the premeditated, lethal, and destructive aftermath(s).
Rather regrettably, I believe that this will fall on deaf ears. And even if it doesn’t, for the show of it, of doing something, what we could end up with is more blankness and darkness than we have now; more cunning political smokescreens. I say this because our probes and commissions, without fail, seem to end up with the inconclusive taking firm hold, and a sense of frustration and desolation that there is neither truth nor justice in this country. What we end up having is more mystery, more speculation, more amusement, and more rousing verbal chasers with which to drink rum and carry on majestically.
This was where Lusignan and Linden led. It was where Bartica and Lindo Creek cruised and docked, while leaving all of us clueless. That is, all of us, except for the intellectual forces in high places, and their street enforcers either lying low or laid to rest. I fear that there is the high probability that the Cotton Tree murders will suffer the same fate, thus adding the politically hideous to what was criminally (suspected also to be politically) callous. Because the racial element courses through all related speculations, there are only the worst of suspicions and conclusions embraced as to who is responsible for what was done to those who died.
The byproduct of all of this is that our sorry and sick political culture gets a new transfusion of oxygen to keep it going for the time being. For the doubters, I present this: if the President (and he is the one) ever makes the decision to invite the Argentine forensic team to investigate the Cotton Tree deaths, their marching orders will furnish the first clues. Then, the report, if any is ever fully released to the public, is sure to be doctored, sanitized, and so bland, as to leave more questions and suspicions than answers and closures. I remind also of the stirring presidential promises made immediately after the Cotton Tree deaths (as I recall the opposition people who blocked and dissembled) and I say, let us demonstrate, this one time, that there is political sincerity (a vile oxymoron) in getting to the true bottom of what happened, how, why, and who could be responsible. Of course, that would call for a slew of surrounding probes. Since we have little else that is progressive to do, we could indulge ourselves. Bring on Argentina, but remember to cry for Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
