If there appears to be a tiresome redundancy of comment on the extent of public indifference to the strictures associated with the country’s efforts to keep the worst excesses of the Coronavirus at bay, that is because of the need to constantly remind ourselves that we are in the midst of a global emergency and that we ignore those strictures, possibly at our own peril. The message being sent by the continually rising victim count is unmistakable.
Here in Guyana and in the face of all sorts of universal evidence to the contrary, there exists, a sizeable body of opinion to the effect that the Coronavirus is nothing but a hoax. That, of course, is quite simply, a contrived nonsense to justify the shocking level of indiscipline in sizeable sections of the populace. Those who peddle this arrant nonsense are, it seems, resolved that not even a circumstance of national/global emergency will distract them from their accustomed excesses. From the outset, they simply refused to embrace the restraints that struck them as being inimical to their accustomed recklessness. The strictures, they determined, were ‘cramping their style.’
Nor, insofar as the transgressions are concerned, are the accusing fingers that are being pointed at officialdom been misdirected. The entrenchment of the delinquency insofar as adherence to the COVID-19 strictures is concerned, has been, in large measure, a function of a seeming absence of official will to enforce those strictures. There have been occurrences, too, that might even give cause for conclusion that the culpability of the authorities goes beyond indifference, reaching into the realm of actually turning a blind eye to popular excesses in some instances.
Two clear instances of what might be termed inappropriate official behaviour should be cited at this juncture. The first was the shocking official failure to sanction the feral blast by the Private Sector Commission (PSC) targeting the state-established COVID-19 monitoring body when the latter sought to censure the Palm Court Bar over what it deemed to be a transgression of the curfew hours. A few weeks ago there was the equally outrageous occurrence at an Everest Cricket Ground Softball event which was being attended by President Ali as the event’s Patron. From all accounts the extent of the transgressions of the COVID-19 protocols on that occasion were sufficiently blatant to cause the President to beat an unceremonious hasty retreat after admonishing the organizers for countenancing blatant face mask and social-distancing transgressions.
There could have been no more fitting a juncture, one feels, than the Everest incident, for the throwing down of an official gauntlet insofar as enforcement of the strictures is concerned. Nothing, as far as we are aware, happened.
The recently-released information by the authorities in Barbados concerning the Easter strictures associated with public behaviour underscores what would appear to be the sustained preparedness of the government there to lay down and more importantly, effectively enforce the requisite precautionary protocols. Indeed, one gets the impression that Prime Minister Mia Mottley has assumed the lead role in ensuring the effective enforcement of the strictures. One need only examine the specificity of the ‘clauses’ contained in the Easter Weekend strictures covering the various aspects of public behaviour and which goes along with the earlier clear signals sent by Prime Minister Mottley that her government intends to hold the feet of both the enforcing authorities and the populace as a whole to the fire. The protocols cover aspects of public behaviour beginning with leaving home and extending to pursuits that including shopping, church-going and kite-flying, among others. It seems that where erecting such defences as her country can against COVID-19 is concerned, Prime Minister Mottley is neither granting exemptions nor ‘taking prisoners.’ Interestingly, the strictures put in place in Barbados appear to have been fashioned against the backdrop of a certain level of multi-stakeholder participation. We see no evidence of that here.
Comparisons of this type must, of course, take account of the fact that logistically, managing public behaviour in Barbados is a task of a different magnitude to doing so in Guyana where the sheer extent of the land mass and the various intervening constraints pose decidedly greater challenges than those confronting a decidedly modest-sized island. There are, however, other key differences; like the preparedness of the authorities in our sister CARICOM country to authoritatively press the enforcement bodies into service in terms of doing their jobs, aggressively, applying such legal measures as are at their disposal to push back popular recklessness and recalcitrance and embracing a multi stakeholder approach to the planning and execution of the strictures deemed necessary to try to stave off the worst excesses of the pandemic.
