Dear Editor,
The PPP/C government decision to support the dismissal of Superintendent of Police Simon McBean is a clear indication that the Jagdeo/PPPC government is destroying the fabric of the Guyanese society with its discriminatory practices and the selective application of the laws.
May I state en passant, that I do not believe that the government merely supported the decision of the Police Service Commission, as stated by the government’s head of circumlocution, Dr Roger Luncheon. The truth is, the government is clearly the architect of the action taken against Mr McBean. However, in its usual approach of seeking to make the PPP/C dominated Police Service Commission look independent it talks about support for the decision to conceal the reality. I am not fooled and no sane Guyanese is.
Permit me to make the point as well that the PPP/C does not believe in independent institutions. Their greatest fight in Parliament when enacting legislation is to ensure all agencies are controlled by ministers of government. They believe in and practise executive control of all institutions within the society.
To illustrate my position that the decision is discriminatory and reflective of selective application of the laws, I refer to the case of the then Senior Superintendent Mr Steve Merai.
During the 2002 crime spree, it should be recalled that Mr Merai left the Guyana Police Force. Interestingly, Mr Merai returned to Guyana one year later (McBean only needs coverage for seven months) and was readmitted to the Guyana Police Force.
The Guyanese public must judge for itself whether a policeman who chooses to improve his policing academic qualifications should be fired, or one who sought refuge in flight from the criminals he should have been protecting us against. It is now history that the Jagdeo government refused to promote and then fired the one who sought to develop his policing skills and retained and promoted the one who sought refuge overseas. And as an aside, may I point out that information at my disposal suggests that Mr Merai does not have a tertiary education and we are not here considering his well-known indiscretions for one of which Minister Rohee had promised an investigation. That investigation experienced a stillbirth. The stark reality is this government fired the ambitious and competent one and retained the one who was not discharging his policing responsibilities at a time when they were most needed. This is a strange kind of good governance in our ‘democracy.’
It should be made clear that I do not support anyone leaving their job without the required approval, though I understand the challenges Mr McBean would have faced to get the required permission. My essential argument is that there exists a bad precedent in the Merai case and that to treat Mr.McBean the way this government did after having turned a blind eye to the Merai case, raises the issue of discrimination. It should be evident to all that it is not rules and regulations that matter.
I am convinced that the decision to fire Mr McBean is discriminatory in nature and a clear indication that this government has become so arrogant that it feels it can and does apply different strokes to different folks and does not have to respect the laws of Guyana. If the government claims to be democratic it must be guided by the writings of one of the founders of democratic thought, John Locke, who stated that the ”Freedom of men under government is to have a standimg rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not be subject to the inconsistant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.” Clearly the government had one set of rules for Merai and another for McBean. How sad!
Yours faithfully,
Aubrey C. Norton, MP
