I commend President Irfaan Ali for setting aside time in his packed schedule to travel to Linden and to meet with the grieving. Admittedly, the president is getting good at this kind of exercise. One hopes that he doesn’t get too good at it. I do. I don’t know what the president said, but there is certainty that he assured all of his determination to deliver justice to the families, to do all that is required for all-around satisfaction in very bad circumstances. Very good so far, on Pres. Ali’s part. Then, the cynicism that has long overtaken my skepticism takes hold; it has a hard time letting so. Because I recall a faraway place called Cotton Tree.
I believe that the finer points of memory still hold well. President Ali went to Cotton Tree in the quick aftermath of the gruesome murders of the Henry youngsters. A good step. President Ali held the hands of the grieving parents of those two forever lost youths. A caring and warming move. President Ali looked into the hurt eyes of those anguished folks and promised and promised. Oh yes! Promise he did. The best that was possible so that justice would prevail. I will say it: the president was good. So good that I fell for it. The first time was in the content of his inaugural address when he swore to be about transparency, unity, and accountability. Cotton Tree was the last time that I have ever trusted Mohamed Irfaan Ali. The man, the president, the national leader all fell into ignominy before my eyes, in the expanse of my thinking. For in him, in his postures, in his words, he has been the epitome of one who says much, but does so little, delivers the negligible (at best), the questionable, at its worst.
Because the justice that he promised has been elusive. It is the nature of justice promised by politicians the world over, with Guyana’s President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, the latest in a long line of such promisers, such failures at delivering. Political justice and presidential justice have their own peculiar characteristics. To repeat again and again: President Ali has gotten too good with words; so good that he has fallen in love with himself for his cleverness. Smooth words in difficult circumstances. Easy words that are like the product of some smart artificial intelligence program. Cheap words that are so bankrupt in significance that they degrade the circumstances and those listening and watching and weighing.
Due to his propensity to be too zealous with words, too cavalier in his usage, they aren’t worth the words uttered; not even equivalent to the tissue that people use to sanitize themselves before the toilet is flushed. They have no value. Circumstances, as they develop going forward, will prove how right I am, or wrong I am. When a leader swears, he must be faithful to that oath. When the Guyana Police Force was most in need of a spirit in the mold of a Paul Slowe, it got the slow of mind, and the sleazy of heart. Obedience to dictates. No one should have to guess from who and where and about what. Make the Cotton Tree matter go away in a particular way. It did, and the mothers of the departed Henrys have also departed from this bitter and unjust vale. What has happened to basic justice, justice for the poor man, in this country? The unattached victim, the community declared to be adversarial, the people looked down upon as the no account children of a lesser god?
So, now that President Ali went to Linden and shared his time and space with the mourning families, there are now his words that come so easily. In another officer of this land, I would be tempted to say so sleazily. So hollowly. So pathetically. I refrain from saying so, because it is the head of state, and to that office I owe a duty, regardless of the credentials and credibility of the holder. There shall be the sacrificial offerings, and the self-congratulations of justice served. Oh yes! Then what about the rest of the iceberg of putridity and political perversity that has brought the Guyana Police Force to the sorry state that it finds itself. Indeed, if not Guyana itself.
