Dear Editor,
Dear Editor, the legal folks are writing with some degree of interest on the question of the service by a senior member of the Guyana Police Force on Rickford Burke. The allegations by the Guyana Police Force and in the present circumstances certain members of the Government stems from what is publicly known to be Burke’s exposing alleged misdeeds by the PPP/Civic Government of Guyana. In an unrelated letter, another writer says that politics has no place in sports. I am bemused that in this day and age, writers can be so naive as to believe that politics particularly in Guyana and the wider world are unrelated. It is politics and critics and the boycott of the then Guyana team to take to the playing field that an all-white apartheid team that brought South Africa and others to their senses. It is clear that politics is embedded in the fabric of our lives in Guyana. Unfortunately, the truth.
Criminality is a soft or hard matter depending on the actors. Recall, the case of Roger Khan, the law enforcement agency of the great USA understood that Khan, based on his public statement, made it clear that the political directorate sought him as a sacred cow, so he was picked up in a neighbouring country and taken to the USA to face trial. The rest is history. We have Public Servants in Guyana suspended, dismissed and losing pension rights for a number of reasons. In Guyana a public officer who made a so-called mistake of adjusting from $USD214M to $USD3M of taxes owned by the oil giants is given a slap on the wrists and a penalty of two weeks’ pay. Remember the poor koker operator, who was fired on the spot for causing damages nowhere near billions of dollars. Different strokes for different folks. We see Guyanese in foreign lands saying all sorts of unpleasant things about non-PPP Government Ministers but as the folks will say ‘no big ting.’
Today in bottom house meetings and elsewhere, all sorts of unkind things are said about the few independent media by PPP top brass here and in the US but they are friends of the Government. So while Roysdale Forde, Datadin and Mr. Singh entertains us on the right to serve or not to serve, unhappily, politics has tarnished every aspect of life in our beloved country. Sad but that is so.
Sincerely,
Eric Moseley, MS