In a nation whose Constitution enshrines the right to life as sacred, the continued pattern of extra-judicial killings under successive People’s Progressive Party (PPP) governments is a grotesque betrayal of that promise. From Bharrat Jagdeo to Donald Ramotar, and now Irfaan Ali, the PPP has presided over a horrifying trend: state-sanctioned violence, a justice system that refuses to account for it, and a governing elite that shows no interest in ending it.
The latest casualties—Ronaldo Peters and Dan Johnson of Linden, gunned down last week—have once again torn open the wounds of a community still scarred by the memories of Ron Somerset, Shemroy Bouyea, and Allan Lewis, murdered in cold blood by the Guyana Police Force on July 18, 2012. These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a deep rot within Guyana’s law enforcement and justice system, a rot fertilised by impunity, political expediency, and racial disregard.
Let us be blunt: this is not just about rogue officers. This is a systemic issue. The Ali administration, like its predecessors, has inherited and perpetuated a culture where the police are above the law, and where, particularly, Afro-Guyanese lives are treated as disposable. The government has shown no willingness to activate the Coroner’s Act, to hold renegade officers accountable, or to investigate past killings that have left families without answers and communities without peace.
The use of live rounds on unarmed citizens last week was not an accident—it was a message. A message that reinforces what too many in Guyana have feared for too long: that some lives are simply not worth protecting. That due process, human dignity, and constitutional rights are luxuries afforded only to the privileged or politically favoured. That Afro-Guyanese lives, in particular, can be snuffed out without consequence.
This state-sanctioned violence and willful inaction carry terrifying consequences. It risks reducing an entire ethnic group through targeted neglect and terror. It hollows out trust in the rule of law, makes a mockery of social cohesion, and leaves mutual respect shattered on the ground where yet another Black man is shot dead.
President Ali’s hasty appearance at last week’s scene, followed by a promise to investigate using the discredited Regional Security System (RSS), only deepens the insult. This is political theater in an election year—an attempt to placate, distract, and spin a narrative, not to reckon with the real causes of the violence. What Guyana needs is not another sham investigation, but real police reform, a reassertion of the rule of law, and an uncompromising commitment to constitutional justice for all citizens.
The government’s failure to act decisively is not only a policy failure—it is a moral one. Each killing that goes uninvestigated, each officer shielded from consequence, and each family left in the dark erodes what little legitimacy remains in Guyana’s law enforcement system. Until there is genuine accountability, until justice is not only promised but delivered, the government stands complicit in every bullet fired, every body buried, and every tear shed by grieving loved ones.
The time for excuses is long over. If Guyana is to be a nation of laws and not of political fiefdoms, then the PPP government must stop hiding behind commissions and finally confront the truth: a state that will not protect the lives of its most vulnerable is a state that has forfeited its moral right to govern.
