Dear Editor,
The Main Street murder gets mistier by the day, more of a mystery with each new development. What’s going on? Really going on with this whodunit that has neither owner, sponsor, maybe even executioner? I am trying to pick up the pieces, but they crumble to the touch.
The Regional Security System (RSS) is a mystery all by itself, and more engaged in issues about territorial integrity, among other things. It shouldn’t have been the first or second choice for a probe of a probe. I will have no truck presently with conclusions of a coverup of prior coverups. Since the PPP Government has such close, and loudly hailed, ties with the U.S. Government, the FBI is there just for the asking. Of course, given some of the principals fingered, the PPP Government has its own protection work to do, which doesn’t include Sgt. Bascom. Strangely, other than for lawsuits hanging on his head, he has become the forgotten man, almost a nonentity and a bystander, in the hazes of the high-level hijinks swirling around this murder. Of course, he makes for a noble stand with calls about offering him witness protection, which I support.
This witness protection business is only isolated and spotlighted because a reportedly bosom confidant of the Vice President did publicly express alarm that such protection was not forthcoming, and even took a potshot at the majesty of the President. This is not an ordinary presence in the public space, but a ranking insider, speaking with the authority of the top, and with the research and intelligence of Freedom House. When such people speak or write, it is the equivalent of the leaders themselves stepping forward and doing the deed. Further, to call for witness protection, and to call out the President for seeming sluggishness, tells Guyana that most senior people in the PPP Government have some awareness that this protection of Sgt. Bascom is both vital and justified. I don’t know about anyone else, but I am enlightened, given the unprecedented nature of the open departure with His Excellency. Somebody knows something that insists this witness protection is more than necessary, it is compulsory. I take the position that that ‘something’ is substantial, and though the public posture (grant the man the protection) may have been sweetly funded through intermediaries, we have it in black and white, and from the top of the inside of the PPP Government.
Editor, I retrace steps: what’s going on? Who is working overtime to make mules out of Guyanese over a murder? Why all these angles entangling political, official, and commercial people? I give the President a partial free pass for now. If this murder mystery, the Main Street mayhem, is on the up and up, I am astonished that senior cops were comfortable in making themselves look less than straight, less than pros, and less than honourable. I add it was not minimally so, but considerably. Obviously, there is more than meets the eye, given the heavy hitters entwined in a regular murder, though none never really is.
I find myself now swayed and leaning more towards that thinking of some about coverup(s), which only well-connected and deep-pocketed people bring to successful conclusion.
It is in this local political, business, and investigatory swamp that RSS finds itself embroiled. Counsel Nigel Hughes raises the pertinent question about why the people at the RSS did not see it fit to engage his client, Sgt. Bascom. I am sure he has more of the same piercing inquiries. Moreover, the family of the fallen man pointed to that inconvenience of the surveillance cameras picking up relevant details, but blind to images of shooters. This is no longer about what’s going on, but who is looking out for whom.
As said, I draw no conclusions, since I don’t know enough of anything. But this I know: a tangled web results, when we practice deceiving as a standing national culture. It is neither poetry nor philosophy. It is ugly Guyanese reality.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
