Another child is dead. Another Guyanese family is shattered. Another community is traumatized. Another injustice looms unresolved. The heartbreaking case of 11-year-old Adrianna Younge is not an anomaly, it is part of a gruesome continuum of violence, neglect, and indifference under the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) regime. And unless we as a people awaken from our political stupor, there will be another. And another. And another.
We’ve been here before. Mocha. Orin Boston. The Henry boys. Courtney Crum-Ewing. Suresh Singh. The murdered Linden duo. The murdered Linden trio. Each one a life erased. Each one a case unresolved or deliberately buried. Each one a slap in the face of justice. Each one followed by crocodile tears from state officials, silence from institutions, and circus press conferences that insult the intelligence of a weary public.
Adrianna Younge’s case exposes again the rot at the core of Guyana’s policing and governance. A young girl, reportedly abducted, disappears under murky circumstances and is later found dead in the most grotesque betrayal of her innocence and her right to life. Yet the very institutions tasked with protecting our children and enforcing justice were asleep, or complicit. While political operatives spin fairy tales, the police bungle or deliberately muddy the investigation. No urgency. No transparency. No accountability. But what else is new?
The truth is we live under a regime with blood on its hands and propaganda in its mouth. The PPP government, headed by a man whose every utterance is soaked in contempt for ordinary Guyanese, cannot credibly claim moral leadership. President Irfaan Ali’s crocodile promises of justice ring hollow when his government has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to deliver justice in case after case. And Jagdeo, the shadow emperor, presides over it all with arrogance and impunity, still unrepentant for the extrajudicial slaughter of hundreds under his watch alongside his then-Minister of Home Affairs, Ronald Gajraj.
We laugh and cheer when these monsters roll into our communities with condescending “outreaches,” peddling handouts and hollow promises. We line the streets like carnival is in town, hoping to be seen, hoping for scraps, hoping for land titles that never come, for low-interest mortgages that never materialize, for grants that remain the stuff of slogans and social media boasts.
Meanwhile, food prices are out of reach. Youth unemployment festers. Small businesses suffocate under red tape. Land remains inaccessible to poor Afro-Guyanese communities while close friends of the regime grab hundreds of acres. And still we equivocate. Still we say “at least they doing something.” Still our so-called leaders chase validation from foreign diplomats who care more about Exxon’s quarterly reports than the tears of Adrianna Younge’s mother.
We have become a nation that tolerates evil, that excuses incompetence, that dances while our children die.
Enough.
There is only one solution: Banish the PPP from power. Not because the opposition is perfect. Not because there’s a quick fix. But because the people must send a message that blood, corruption, and deceit will no longer be rewarded with votes.
If we don’t, if we fail to act decisively, then let us not pretend to be shocked when the next Adrianna Younge is buried under a banner of state-sponsored silence.
Because rest assured, the next injustice is already on its way.
