There was a Kaieteur News article last week captioned “Govt. uneasy with levels of crime, violence in Guyana -Nandlall” (KN, July 25th) that is referenced. I think that all Guyanese owe a special debt to Attorney General, Mr. Anil Nandlall for sharing that PPP government state of mind. I do.
Now if I were a different citizen, anxieties would flare over Mr. Nandlall’s studious pretense at ignorance, especially when this official uneasiness about levels of crime and violence is broadly, rightly weighed. It is easy to award Mr. Nandlall full marks for pretending to have just landed in Guyana, not to know what is going on; however, those marks diminish in quantity and quality when full frankness is examined, required.
To the learned AG I say this: in the highest levels of the Government of Guyana, there is a cabinet. In that cabinet, there are those who have committed different crimes at different times against the Guyanese people. The litany of such crimes has not slowed down, but rather has developed acceleration, considering all the billions involved in many different projects in Guyana. Financial crimes have been a frightening horror committed against Guyanese, with no end in sight.
Even the Americans are so fed up, so outraged, that they are intervening and laying out how our laws have been allegedly violated. It is the ultimate humiliation. Is the Guyana Government, the same one that is now so “uneasy with levels of crime, violence in Guyana” still stuck at platitudes about respect for the rule of law” and similar such self-serving (but meaningless) postures? White-collar crimes, Mr. AG, are draining the red corpuscles out of Guyana’s bloodstream. Those crimes are at sky-high levels. Perhaps what is genuine and effective should be done to combat those, reduce to a more normal level, however that is defined.
Then there are those not-so-new kids on the block. The bad boys called cybercrimes, plus other crimes. As a man of the law, one with respect for the majesty of justice, AG Nandlall should know, make it his duty to know, of a shadowy PPP social media body which has cabinet roots and cabinet offshoots. When cyber crimes are committed at will against citizens by PPP Government cabinet minister(s), it is the ultimate hypocrisy to speak of the government being uneasy about crime. When crime begins in the big government house, then the yard inside the fence, and the streets outside the gates usually run riot with crime, as observed, interpreted, experienced.
Lawbreakers in the cabinet, crimes committed by PPP Central Committee members, even if only one crime and one member, foster a certain mindset in an already uneven society (where the law is concerned). Some members of local society feel that they are under no obligation to resist the assaults and daily bombardments involving all manner of crimes. They just get their share of it. After all, if government people can commit crimes-cyber crimes, financial crimes, violent crimes, serial crimes-and get away with them all, then why not the ordinary people in Guyanese society forced to fend for themselves.
When these crimes in government and by government people proliferate to the level of a public secret, AG Nandlall should know as a man of the law that the regard that regular citizens have for the law breaks down. The blows from government are so frequent, so numbing and angering, that too many already edgy citizens take matters into their own hands and commit their own crimes. There is appreciation that the versatile and erstwhile AG Nandlall was handed, or took upon himself, the role of messenger. It has its rewards, one that also is a magnet for battering rams.
As an enduring senior member of the PPP’s prestigious Central Executive, he should be, must be, aware of those who commit crimes sitting right by his elbows, maybe right up to his eyeballs. How and why do they enjoy immunity from the long arm of the law is a question for AG Nandlall, one that I encourage him to ponder well. For when a pass is given repeatedly by the government to its own lawbreakers, then some citizens say why not, why does that same standard not apply to them…. Perhaps, there are those in the PPP Government and the PPP’s Central Executive that are bigger than the State, bigger than the law, and there is nothing that either AG Nandlall, or even President Ali can do about them.
Returning to KN’s caption, the government is also uneasy about violence. Thanks, AG Nandlall, and whatever that means it comforts. My hangup involves the contradiction. For when President Ali himself has been verbally violent against naysayers, media workers, and conscientious objectors, then that violence begets a different kind of violence. When Vice President Jagdeo is outrageously, obnoxiously violent-verbal violence again-then citizens look on, listen, and learn. If that kind of leadership violence is not a problem, the other kinds should pass muster. Ill-concealed impatience and the smug arrogance embroiled in verbal violence urges imitation by those who believe that leaders have it right.
Summation: the source of violence in Guyana has lost any right to talk about its unease with levels of violence for that is what it has spawned. Like crime, like levels of violence, the PPP Government now stands as Public Exhibit and Public Enemy Number 1.
