Pursuant to longstanding international law there is this fortress called diplomatic immunity. No troubles here. Pursuant to the Guyana Constitution, there is this creature called presidential immunity. My troubles begin with that provision, disaster. I see shades of the divine right of kings, and with that one out of the Vatican about papal infallibility ex cathedra. Regardless of the misgivings and disagreement, they are in the books and a product of time and custom. From this already agitated state, comes a single question laid before the impressive presences of the Hons. Irfaan Ali, Bharat Jagdeo, and Anil Nandlall.
Could one of my dear brothers-all younger, far keener in intellect, more boisterously voluble-say when did the Guyana Police Force get immunity? Immunity from being called to account? Immunity from the expanse of what that means, stretching all the way to the jurisprudential arenas and to the corrective confines of this country’s remedial penitentiaries? For the moment, I overlook monies to be returned and multiples of what should be part of the penalties for taking the Guyanese people money from them (on the street), or via other strategies in the higher offices.
As my Jewish rabbi enlightened, the problem with asking one question is that it opens the floodgates to a series of follow-up ones. It is not only when the GPF was granted immunity status, but who made that decision? Because they are honorable men of the first standing, it could never be President Ali nor former president Jagdeo nor Attorney General Nandlall. If it was not them, and it certainly wasn’t me, then who?
The trouble with thinking and deep contemplation is that it leads to some dangerous paths. For everybody. Senior members of the GPF, an institution with its own encyclopedic history [and sacred constitution], have been fingered in one allegedly highly questionable development after another, yet there has been nothing other than boo and poo. The impotence of the PPP Government. Senior officials in the PPP Government have either pooh-pooed terribly disgraceful circumstances, while even more senior functionaries have been busy trying to dig out the encrustations of what Guyanese call boo-boo from their eyes.
It is not merely a matter of the PPP Government at the highest levels not seeing anything wrong, but as provided for in the GPF’s special organizational constitution, the big political Doberman pinchers have hustled to reserve their right to remain silent. From Matthews Ridge to State House Ridge (and others), there has been this shroud of silence. It as if death is either in the neighborhood or it has already happened in the house. More than once. There is Freedom House. There is State House. There is that House of Horrors: The Vice President’s official den of operations. Silence and impotence all over.
Why the silence and how could there be such near impenetrable silence on nationally embarrassing matters involving envelopes, weddings, busts, airports, Americans, among other memorable developments? There is a peculiar rustling that interferes with the pall of silence. It is of the hushed movements of senior men from one place to another, of threadlike sketches about what has been done, and what should be expected to follow. Now if there is any Guyanese who is so foolish as to expect persuasive outcomes from SOCU, they really ought to be slapped with several felony charges as a penalty for their naivete and gullibility. Time for some hard talk and harder truths.
Secrets are a billion-dollar business. Political secrets represent multibillion dollar trading opportunities. The higher the politicians, the bigger the shakedowns. The owners of secrets are well positioned to beat-up, beatdown, bargain. What applies in the corporate world has even more application in the world of government where reporting and accounting are low priority considerations. Also, the lower the character of those in charge of government, the more and deeper their secrets are, which means that they are held hostage to those in law enforcement.
I recommend that Guyanese should treat themselves to a crash course on how the former head of America’s vaunted FBI took care of business, protected himself. He held several presidents hostage. It is how law enforcement bosses do their version of CYA. Translation: cover your rear (a**). This is not taught in textbooks or seminars or offered through overseas training.
In the final analysis, after all the PowerPoints and key operating manuals have been rolled out and made a big production of, matters boil to this pot bottom: mutual backscratching. In other words, the GPF stays silent on the enormous secrets its senior people have about the crimes of key figures in the PPP Government (and group) and the same PPP Government is only too glad (too compromised) to return the favor when ranking big shots in the GPF overindulge in what is best termed unprecedented institutional excesses.
At the risk of repetition, this is the nutshell: who has skeletons for whom, who knows where the skeletons are buried. He who knoweth the whereabouts of the many smoking guns of the PPP Government guarantees silence. The silence of the GPF inspires the silence and impotence of the PPP Government. Perhaps, Drs. Ali and Jagdeo and Nandlall may care to comment. I caution discretion on the part of the latter, for the Yanks have their, ah, files.
