Amidst the seemingly never-ending swirl of multi-faceted controversy that has become an embedded occupational hazard of the Guyana Police Force, seriously limiting the effective delivery of its mandate, periodic public pronouncements dripping with altruism are made by the Head of State, at the forum of the annual Conference of Police Officers. The presentations are usually invariably, ritualistic, dripping with a mix of reprimand and optimism and are almost always underpinned by the assumption that there exists a complete lack of public understanding of just what ails the GPF.
President Irfaan Ali’s ‘offering’ to the assembled Police Officers this time around, did not depart to any great extent from the customary fare. A lot of what the President had to say had to do with the need for the GPF to ‘raise its game.’ As it happened his address was delivered against the backdrop of what, these days, is an enhanced public understanding of the goings-on in the GPF and of why its prevailing public image remains as shabby as it is.
The theme of the President’s address to the Conference could well have been ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’ It dealt – as these presentations have done, over the years – with what is now virtually universally known to be the gaping gap between the performance level of the Force and the overall magnitude of the national law-enforcement challenge. This is one of those recurring decimals that gets a mention every year without a great deal ever being said about remedial change. It is not something that can, these days, be hidden from the public purview.
Pity indeed that at last week’s Annual Officer’s Conference the President opted, deliberately, it seemed, to address what he seemingly sees as some of the operational deficiencies of a Police Force, which, one might add, are plain for all to see, whilst leaving aside, the fact that the Force continues to be caught fast in a leadership crisis that is now overwhelmingly weighed down by the politics of policing.
Who leads and the quality of leadership required to take a Police Force in crisis forward, sits at the apex of the wider challenge facing the Force. The problem, as it happens, is a political one and it is for the political leadership to fix that problem. The question that arises here has to do with whether the issue of leadership succession is underpinned by political preference rather than the much more grounded and reliable criteria of experience and professional proficiency.
The overwhelming tragedy here is that while the immediate stumbling block to the enhancement of the operational capabilities of the Force now appears to lie on a political gurney awaiting the final ‘pick,’ President Ali’s presentation to the Officers would have come across, amongst at least some of his audience, as something of a skirting of the ‘bottom line’ in the matter of what really ails the Guyana Police Force.
Indeed, one finds it almost impossible to seriously discuss how the Force can meaningfully ‘raise its game’ in terms of responding to the surfeit of law-enforcement challenges that continue to be piled onto a modest plate, in circumstances where its biggest impediment so often appears to be that discommoding political Sword of Damocles which, arguably above all else, continues to shackle its operational effectiveness.
What political administrations need to understand is that where the effective functioning of the GPF is concerned, it is not only that it cannot have it both ways, so to speak , but, as well, that it does appear more than a little waggish when, at a forum like the Annual Police Officers’ Conference its pronouncements and promises touch on every other issue save and except what appears to be an unmistakable determination (of political administrations) to fashion the Force in its own image and likeness through a leadership succession regimen that appears to want to make a mockery of the laid-down procedures. That can only be a recipe for making what is already a less than desirable situation, a good deal worse.
A Guyana Police Force that is ‘fixed’ to satisfy the whims of those who hold political office will forever run the risk of being derailed by an agenda that departs from its ‘service and protection adage’. The President, particularly must be mindful of this.