As we count down the days to the end of 2024, four issues loom large in the national agenda. The first has to do with the extent to which the petro-transformation of the state of the country will impact on the all-round enhancement of the quality of life for the people of Guyana. Secondly, there is the issue of such incremental developments as might derive from what, of late, has been the Maduro administration’s increasing assertiveness in the matter of its territorial claim against Guyana.
Thirdly, there is the increasing meltdown in the public image of the Guyana Police Force and the palpable failure of the political administration to turn things around; fourthly, there is the political administration’s failure, up to this time, to put effective measures in place to roll back some types of crime that have\become both more prevalent and more dangerous. Here, the point should be made that at some time during the course of the year national attention is probably likely to shift, almost entirely, to next year’s general elections which could take place in November.
It is, however, the intervening months that are likely to count most in terms of preparations for the poll, so that this year, the country is likely to face challenges on both the domestic and international fronts. Here, at home, some of the primary challenges are almost certain to repose in the need to shore up the image of a Guyana Police Force which is likely to be challenged to significantly burnish what are, these days, its decidedly tarnished credentials. What has become even clearer in recent times is the disastrous erosion in the image of the GPF to a point where its ‘Service and Protection’ motto now has little value beyond the utterance itself.
Perhaps the most worrying indication in the continually eroding credentials of the Guyana Police Force is the brazenness of the criminal element, manifested in the execution of increasingly urban crimes, one of the more alarming of which being the Sunday invasion of the premises housing a Superbet facility where the target of the ‘invaders’ was not the premises, per se, but someone who had been visiting the business place. That said, of course, the invasion of business premises by ‘gangs’ of cutlass-wielders amounts to a flagrant disregard for the power of law-enforcement.
Even as the Force continues to fight its multi-faceted ‘demons,’ some of which, unquestionably, are decidedly self-inflicted, what continues to baffle is what appears to be the decidedly low-key role being played by the Home Affairs Ministry in the official effort to put the Force’s image in order. Indeed, the recent disclosures involving Assistant Commissioner Calvin Brutus have had a further blighting effect of the image of the Force. There is no persuasive evidence that the political administration is making any real progress in what, up until now, appears to be feeble efforts to fix the problems afflicting the Force.