Dear Editor,
There will be those in the midst of this paralyzed Guyanese society who will point to the Ahmaud Arbery trial and verdict, and wax righteously about justice, and the long wait, and righting of wrongs. I can only find what is right in such heavenly verbal delights; and I say – absolutely. But another part of me asks what about here, my friends, my brothers, my fellow sojourners of, and along, this soil? In a simpler form, the issue is embedded in this inquiry: what if…. What if we have a similar, or reasonably close, situation, and there are 11 of one, and only one of the other sitting in judgment and then standing to declare before the world of rapt listeners and absorbers that this is where their deliberations led them? Before we were even to reach such a judicial terminal, prompted by such a set of circumstances, what if our law enforcement agents and the entire umbrella of our law justice apparatus were faced with decisions to be made, from the weight of evidence gathered and sifted, analyzed and concluded, how and where would they be then? I pause for breath.
Editor, we love to cheer and commend, but what if we were/are faced with circumstances that, though dissimilar, still provokes rage and cries and the pains that follow? I say we have them here, and it is my tragic duty to put them before my alternately celebrating and seething Guyanese brethren. There was Cotton Tree, and two. There was Number 2 Village and one, the collateral fallout. And just two months ago, there was an outpost named Dartmouth. No! It is not the mysteries of Yorkshire, but just another insoluble one among the many in Guyana. What if those, too, one or two or three all ease into the mists of the unadjudicated? What if, despite developments and charges and inquests and all the rest, all that they peter out to be are the coldest of cold cases? The mere thought brings a chill, and it is not a Thanksgiving November in Georgia, America; but a still occasional warm Guyana approaching December.
We have heard and flourished with justice delayed is justice denied. But I ask, what if the reality is that justice is being destroyed layer by layer, from the heights of the head (who make empty promises), down through the body to the bottom that obey the dictates of the head, then what do we have, Editor? What do we have if nothing is left to be delayed or denied? What if we have nothing left to be destroyed in our system of justice, because we have been so thorough in our efficiencies to suppress truth, to foster the fearsome oppressions of a national system of injustice? And because I am in a place of pondering and provocative thinking today, the strangest of strange ‘what if’ questions came. What if the presiding tribune in the Ahmaud Arbery case was a fine jurist by the name of Clarence Thomas, one also hailing from sweet Georgia, too?
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
