Savagery of the sort perpetrated against the villagers of Lusignan on Saturday morning denotes a fundamental societal collapse. The wanton and indiscriminate targeting of women and children by a large gang of gunmen also signifies a descent into the abyss that has been beckoning the country for some time.
How do people recover from the brutish blitz of these gunmen and the trauma they wrought and imprinted indelibly? Like the horror of the two children in the final seconds of their life as they cowered and sought the protection of their mother who was also brutally gunned down. Or the mother who saw her children lined up before her eyes and mowed down. Or the wife who saw her husband being dragged from under the bed and being blasted in the head. Or the child in hospital barely clinging to life unaware that two of his cherished siblings and his father are no more.
What can the government, any minister or the President himself say to alleviate the cruel chasm that yawned open in so many lives during those brutal 20 minutes? What can the police or the media say? There is nothing to be uttered; only abject, meaningless apologies to make. And if one is brazen enough, to purvey grandiloquent pledges such as the President’s that the security forces will now dominate the area.
The truth is that the three administrations of President Jagdeo have shown very little acumen or insight in rolling back crime. The administrations have made a series of promises that have been honoured in the breach and which would have resulted in electoral defeat in a more mature democracy.
Its major accomplishment in fighting criminals seems to have been clearing the way for a mishmash of equally pernicious criminals to take out those who they perceived to be threats to them – the so-called phantom phenomenon. Heralded in some parts of society, that campaign has dissolved via extraditions, arrests, and fatal internecine rivalries while society still has to grapple with fiendish excrescences like the one that emerged on Saturday.
Despite well-sounding initiatives such as the Disciplined Forces Commission the Jagdeo administrations have blundered from one catastrophe to the next. The fundamental flaw being that there is a complete unwillingness to professionalize the security apparatus lest it clashes with the machinations of the administration
In truth, Saturday’s horror at Lusignan has been played out in lesser versions particularly since March 2002. Six years on the government has no solution. It has however embarked on a series of fanciful promises and engagements with various donors and friendly countries.
The time has come for a reckoning. Let the slaying of the Lusignan 11 marshal all of our efforts. It is also time for the government, in particular the President and the Minister of Home Affairs to drop the pretence. The security situation is not under control. Within five hours there were two chilling attacks. The country’s police headquarters in the capital came under unanswered gunfire and hours later 11 persons were slaughtered on the East Coast with the police putting in their usual late appearance. Anytime 20 to 25 men can storm a village and kill with impunity it rips to shred the pantomimes and fairy tales about crime being reasonably under control. It is a deception of magnificent proportions and has been routinely conjured up by President Jagdeo and his administrations.
The President and his administration have no answers on crime, have no fix on what is happening and have no plan to implement. President Jagdeo must take personal responsibility for this situation. With nearly a decade of increasingly autocratic rule he has failed to conquer crime and has caused a worsening of the situation by not tackling major menaces such as the drug cartels, narco-terrorism and money laundering. He has failed to launch adequate investigations of shocking crimes such as the assassination of one of his own ministers, the mayhem and brutality inflicted on East Coast communities, the unsolved murders of dozens of men, the reign of the death squads and the possible involvement of one of his ministers with the death squads. Notwithstanding this he quite opportunistically announced a major probe following the discovery of two weapons alleged to be linked to the PNC from the 1970s. Exceedingly strange.
What is now in the government’s game plan is anyone’s guess. The plodding citizen’s security initiative and the still inchoate British anti-crime plan promise much but have not yet delivered. There has been much prating about the crimestoppers programme but no stopping of crime and the so-called drug master plan is being mastered by the cocaine barons and their minions.
More radical options should be contemplated and which options have been urged for at least the last 15 years i.e. recourse to crime fighters from professional bodies such as Scotland Yard and a thorough shake-up of the police and the installation of new leadership.
President Jagdeo and the other major decision makers may wish to emulate the Guatemalan administration which after being battered by narco-induced crime and corruption for many years has opted for revolutionary assistance to its criminal justice system from the United Nations.
Earlier this month, Guatemala and the UN announced the establishment of an international team of investigators to aid the criminal justice system in its fight against organized crime. Saturday’s savagery falls well within these parameters. The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala will comprise 150 lawyers and forensic grandees who will prosecute cases in local courts relying heavily on scientific evidence – something completely lacking in local jurisprudence.
Carlos Castresana, the Spanish prosecutor who is heading the commission made the point, according to the LA Times that “Democracy is based on the principle that the weak and the strong, the rich and the poor, those in government and those outside of government, should all be equal in the eyes of the law
