One of the discomfiting things about the behaviour of the incumbent political administration is that it is not in the habit of providing public responses to matters of pointed national importance with either the alacrity or the forcefulness which those situations deserve. It is as if, invariably, it is caught ‘flat-footed’ in situations which, by their very nature, require timely even urgent responses. There are some situations, the nature of which are of such that the longer an official information void persists, the greater the likelihood that, whatever the extent of the urgency associated with the particular issue, the matter at hand could begin to become more challenging to deal with.
As the Stabroek News reported in its Thursday July 18 issue, Home Affairs Minister Robeson Benn, against the backdrop of the tsunami of controversy, even downright scandal, swirling around the Guyana Police Force, delivered an address in which he touched on policemen who “can be bought.” While Minister Benn more or less skirted around the edges of an issue of profound national importance there was no mistaking the fact that he was also trying to drop the most delicate of hints about the groundswell of public scandals in which the GPF has been caught up in, not least the now oft repeated assertion that where crime is concerned the Force, or elements therein, may well have now become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
Here one felt that the timing of the Home Affairs Minister’s address provided generous opportunity for a far more direct throwing open of the problem as well as the boisterous reading of an official ‘riot act’ with regard to the political administration’s zero tolerance of a Police Force that now appears to be drifting further and further away from the moorings of its ‘Service and Protection’ motto. Contextually, there can now be no question than that there exists a formidable case for the President, himself, to speak clearly and definitively about the importance of the Force moving with the requisite urgency to remove the enormous ‘monkey’ perched on its back. Here, it seems that in our current petro-intoxicated state, we may well have placed the aforementioned issues firmly on the back burner, seemingly acting on the assumption that in the fullness of time, the issue of the police becoming unhinged from its ‘Service and Protection’ obligation will go away.
With the swirl of controversy currently buffeting the Force not likely to go away in a hurry, notwithstanding the Acting Commissioner’s altogether tangential recent reported remark about a “highly educated police force” being “indispensable to cultivating trust,” we now have on our plates a report regarding ranks from the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) being arrested by the Police “after their vehicle was intercepted and searched, and they were found to be in possession of 22 bulky bags containing 154 lbs of cannabis.” Here, what it seems we are faced with, is a condition in which the integrity of our two foremost security ‘Forces’ has been, simultaneously, called into question, a circumstance that renders the government vulnerable to accusations about being sound asleep at the wheel.
Up to this time the government, at the highest political level, has appeared pointedly disinclined to make robust public pronouncements on what now appears to be a condition that has come close to a ‘meltdown’ in the behaviour of some functionaries in Disciplined Services. Here, there can be no question than that at this particular point in the country’s socio-political experience, official indifference to pointed, and in some cases, acute delinquencies in the conduct of our security forces will raise eyebrows both within and outside the borders of the country, exposing vulnerabilities that may well go beyond those that currently exist.
A signal feature of the ‘kinks’ that would appear to be opening up in the fabric of our Disciplined Forces is the fact that up to this time, as far as this newspaper is aware, there has been no pronounced public position from the President on a matter which, its implications for domestic crime and security aside, also has implications for broader national security. Contextually, any further extended silence from the President on developments which, manifestly, are bedecked with national security considerations, could well be interpreted as an abdication of responsibility.
