Secretary to the Guyana Defence Board Dr Roger Luncheon last Thursday accepted the keys to a huge warehouse constructed at a cost of US$350,000 and containing disaster relief supplies valued at US$250,000 from USA Ambassador Mr David Robinson in the presence of visiting Commanding General, US Army South, Brigadier General Purl Keen at Camp Stephenson, Timehri. Five hours earlier on the same day, and less than 50km away at Camp Ayanganna in Georgetown, President Bharrat Jagdeo who is also Chairman of the Guyana Defence Board, launched a scathing attack on the USA.
The President told military officers of the Guyana Defence Force gathered for their annual conference that he was fed up with “hypocritical lectures” from the USA, accusing it of being the biggest drug-consuming country in the world; of having a failed border system; of inefficient law enforcement that is unable to stop tons of drugs entering the country, and much more. He complained that US direct assistance to Guyana to fight drug trafficking was about US$20,000 per year, less than the annual salary of a permanent secretary.
What so upset the President as to warrant such a vituperative verbal attack on a friendly benefactor, especially at a time when the Head of the Presidential Secretariat was gratefully receiving essential civil defence equipment such as Guyana never dreamt of purchasing for its beleaguered flood-prone coastal communities?
Most of all, it was the US Department of State’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report which criticised the Administration’s unimpressive underperformance in countering narco-trafficking.
The most recent report indicated that Guyana’s law enforcement agencies seized only a minuscule portion of the cocaine and that their inability to control their borders allowed traffickers to transport narcotics with little resistance.
According to the report, also, despite Guyana’s having promulgated its own National Drug Strategy Master Plan and being a party to various international conventions and agreements, it failed to pass and implement additional legislation to meet its obligations and that investigating and prosecuting money-laundering cases has not been a priority for law enforcement agencies.
Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee admitted that after certain distractions he was “now focused” on addressing the deficiencies which exist in the law enforcement agencies, especially those that are engaged in the fight against drugs. Much of the achievement about which the minister boasts in implementing the National Drug Strategy Master Plan, however, is mere paperwork – identifying local funding sources; signing and ratifying international agreements and conventions; strengthening health and family life education; and computerising the Immig-ration and Criminal Investigation Depart-ments. This is mere housekeeping and suggests that serious fieldwork is still to start. Why should it take nearly two years to appoint a co-ordinator and establish a secretariat for the master plan? What change has there been in the organisation of the tiny, low-level, police counter-narcotics unit and the variation of its predictable pattern of programmed day trips to nearby marijuana fields? How has the badly understaffed Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit been re-organised to prevent narcotics from entering the country? Given the dizzy speed at which Cricket World Cup legislation has passed through the National Assembly, how much more effort is required to pass enabling legislation to counter money-laundering and narco-trafficking?
Although Mr Rohee seems to have convinced himself that illegal narcotics are “stuck somewhere and can’t move because of the vigilance of the law enforcement agencies,” the reality is different. Trinidad and Tobago, the UK, the USA and other countries continue to report seizures of cocaine originating in Guyana and make arrests of Guyanese wanted for trafficking. These things simply do not happen here because it is felt that “the political will” does not exist to combat narcotics trafficking.
Instead of spewing rhetoric, the Administration needs to consider whether the US Department of State’s assertions are substantially correct or false. It also needs to start to sincerely implement its counter-narcotics strategy. Just as the USA gratuitously provided civil defence resources, it can also provide counter-narcotics support if the administration demonstrated the “political will” to combat trafficking. Vilifying a foreign government for calling attention to an international problem will not change the situation.
