Today, the heart is heavier. The pen feels like feathered lead; LED and metal. Let there be light across Guyana. I shine the spotlight on the top, Pres. Ali. Mr. Pres: has this country crossed a fateful line, yet another to make Guyanese recoil fearfully, shudder disbelievingly? Some answers are needed, so the president is petitioned. Here’s the question, Excellency: is the latest line crossed that of murder covered up, washed away, wished out of existence? Literally?
No place is named. No time specified; neither day nor night. Nothing of murdered citizen who breathed that last breath. Not today. Note no gender is mentioned re the victim, now deceased. Nor how and why that murder happened, what happened almost immediately, and the trail that a sordid sequence of events followed. Nor the blinding, deafening silence dominating since. Of one thing there’s certainty: a murder was committed, and it is so many days now, with a news blackout, and official copout, that a cold case develops, hardens. Indeed, the body is being prepared for final farewells, and still no word. Only shadowy silence, that unnatural stillness which haunts this society when the sinister has to be disposed of, and involved parties all find other priorities to occupy their time, give distance.
Mr. Pres: I would be shocked if there’s the barrenness of not knowing, the darkness of ignorance. If trickles and torrents traveled eastward across river and bridges, then it would surprise if Office of the President doesn’t know? What did the president know, and when? I recall Nixon. There’s sensitivity with murderous details, grisly as they are. Delicacy oftentimes induces displays of discretion. A suicide, I understand. Protecting victim is appreciated. Keeping tabs on suspect(s), without showing hand, has merits. But of the dead, what? Surely, that last speck of earthly dignity that can be given, Dr. President, should be honored; the only way that terrible passing is respected, honored, is in the giving. The circumstances that surrounded. The details that reveal, and reinforce. A human being gasping for life’s last line, in violent circumstances, is what should never be suppressed. No matter gruesomeness, it must be shared with society. A society, Dr. President, that Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, proudly informs the world is one of law, order, and respect for the rule of law. Inspiring that is!
Dr. President, and I persist with the honorific. A leader, at that rarified doctoral height, however achieved, normally gleans some empathy along the way, some understanding in the journey, and some discernments of the lynchpins that hold a society aloft. Their pricelessness. One is the law and its demands. Not AG Nandlall’s law, but that of a higher order. Life’s sacredness. Thou shalt not kill has an incomparable inviolability about it. Never cheap; never to be cheapened. How is the PPP Govt going to deal with this killing that occurred close to a thoroughfare, so close as to be a city, maybe a village. And if a village, one that’s illustrious because of its golden children.
Murder makes politics stop dead. Should. Drunk driving overlooked, winked at by authorities may be routine, no eyebrows raised. Domestic violence lessening, with more enlightenment, more ministerial energy. Tint and error-prone offspring all swallowed by tall grass. But murder, what’s the disposition of murder nowadays in PPP Guyana, Excellency? Surely, not so ordinary, of such low standing, that it’s not newsworthy. The Police has blotters and bulletins. Hospitals have their logs, forms; yet not one straying, seeping, sharing post. A country under lockdown, should I say, Mr. President? All well taken care of, Mr. President? Note, Excellency, that I jumped the heads of commissioner and minister. No disrespect meant. Simply that alarm and agitation fuse to inspire going to the mountaintop. President Ali, I asked questions, sir. Done duty to this society, sir. Society waits on Excellency Ali. On a murder hidden. On murder that should be ventilated, never shrouded. The concern is that becomes normalized. No murdered. No murderer. No aiders and abettors. No evidence left. No news about any of those for law-abiding Guyanese. Help, Pres. Ali, help.
