By GHK Lall- I marvel at the spectacle of this country. Institutional and political grandeur. One that involves a holding pattern, a timing pattern. Just like the nerve-wracking work of air traffic controllers. I urge my fellow Guyanese: the sequence, study the sequence. There’s the rich story. It was deadly. It’s also a beauty, with proper regard for family.
March 2021: a man executed in the street. Cold. Calculated. Within a stone throw of the official residence of Guyana’s chief governor. A chief governor with a young family; guests usually assembled, milling around. A lethal shooting that outraged, a slap on Pres Ali’s face. It happened in the too-close-for-comfort vicinity of Main Street, didn’t it? The president didn’t seem too anxious. Perhaps, the frenzied ecstasies of the bruising 2019-2020 elections still burned brightly. Unready to cool amid the celebrations.
But a killer volley near the president’s front yard had called for all-hands-on-duty and an all-points bulletin. To track the killer(s). Despite COVID-19 roadblocks, surveillance cameras, and covert intel, law enforcement came up empty. The charred remains of a torched vehicle were all. Dead men tell no tales. Vehicles put to death carry their secrets to the grave. There the case ran cold.
A family grieved. Scant sympathy. Clamored for justice. Nothing. A case grew colder. The deep freeze waited. The back of it. A police sergeant spoke. A person of interest spoke through a suit. There, the matter of an execution style killing slumbered feverishly, chillingly. The blood of a man murdered crying from the freezer for justice. From where? By whose hand?
March 2021 to June 2026: In this country, friendships have contributed enormously to subversions of justice. Verifiable travesties in and of themselves. In Guyana, warring foes may lead to the rediscovery of that elusive entity called justice. What wasn’t known, now seen.
July 2026: It took developments over a farm for redevelopment of interest in that Main Street cold case. What became too hot to remain in cold storage. One man made himself into a nuisance, a bigger one. Through disclosures about a farm with fowls and what released a foul smell. Another man took to the airwaves to holler to the world about murder and assorted other felonious malignancies.
All part of a tsunami laden with catastrophe and tragedy. What’s ugly and dirty. Stick religiously to the sequence, citizens. For immediately before, or too close after, a suspect is arrested for the Main Street murder. After five cruel and dismal years, there is this breathtaking swiftness serving as crime resolution and governance in this country.
I think that if there was no farm exposure, there would be no talk of murder and suspected murderers. And no arrest for the dirty, rotten crime. It’s my conviction, the sum of reflections, persuasions, interpretations. I suppose Guyana’s chief legal teacher would be beside himself with joy. At how the wheels of justice roll in this country. The speed of their revolutions, the directions that they follow, the time and places of their terminations. My god! This is the law operation at its blindfolded, avoirdupois embroidered, majestic best.
For years such matters were under lockdown. Not a whiff. Not a leaf stirring. Then, an estate with its alleged states of disarray, dispute, and distress are unchained. Revelation begets revelation. One crime alleged. Another crime-a set of them-thrown right back into the face of the first accuser. Time does have a way of baring its bottom. Secrets. I behold tit-for-tat: take that; let’s prove who has more fat. To absorb. Roll with the punches. Smell cleaner. Cleaner? Someone has to be kidding, a confirmed jester.
I started with the sequence. Softly I leave my fellow citizens with the same sequence: a murder. A shrug. A lull. A whistleblower. Development dashed. Cold case. Cold front. Then a farm. Next, stops pulled out. Last, the bottom falling out. It sounds and feels like anancy story. It is Guyana’s political and institutional reality. Facts on the ground will always defeat criminal fictions. Be they political, social, or environmental. Guyanese are now living under a full-fledged crime wave. Checkout who denied. Now check who disclose.
