A huge collective sigh of relief reverberated around the land when the police revealed that Rondell Rawlins was no more. It does not mean, of course, that our problems are at an end in terms of armed criminals who gun citizens down as though they were nothing more than clay pigeons at a fairground shooting gallery.
There are still remnants of his gang around, although one presumes that without their leader, they will be unable to plan tactics with the kind of shrewdness which he displayed. In addition, given that he was eventually located in the company of only two others, it is clear that his associates have dispersed, which should also make it easier for the Joint Services to deal with them.
At last the disciplined forces have redeemed themselves after the fiasco of Christmas Falls, and this should go some way to restoring their morale. There is nothing like success to breed success, and this particular coup, above all others, should re-invigorate them. Christmas Falls notwithstanding, there is evidence that the Joint Services were making headway in dismantling Rawlins’s network, a critical element if he was to continue life on the run. As such, therefore, one had the impression that the army and police were not far behind the gang, and that slowly, but surely it was running out of options. Whether the disciplined services had any technical assistance from outside in tracking the criminals out of the Berbice jungle has not been revealed, but even if they had, it does not detract in any way from their efforts.
There are still questions, however, about which the public is curious. The circumstances of Jermaine Charles’s escape from the Sparendaam Magistrate’s Court remain obscure, more especially since in the end he was found in the company of none other than Rawlins himself. One cannot help but wonder whether the latter had a hand in setting up the escape, and exactly how Charles managed to link up with his gang leader. Then there is the curious case of Ms Tenisha Morgan, who disappeared mysteriously, and was said to have been the “reason” why Rondell Rawlins took his gang on that murderous rampage in Lusignan. So where is Ms Morgan? Even the police appear unable to throw light on that subject.
There are, of course, the obvious questions about how the Rawlins gang established themselves up the Berbice River, although the police may know a great deal more about that matter than they have made public at an official level. One fears, however, that now Rawlins is dead, the mystery of what happened at Lindo Creek may never be solved. Then there is the issue of how Rawlins got himself from three hundred miles up the Berbice River, to the highway not far from Timehri. In a general sense, one can only hope that as many of the remaining gang members as possible are brought in alive by the Joint Services, so that among several other things a picture can be built up of how such a formidable killing machine evolved after 2002-03 and managed to operate with impunity for so long in the backlands of the East Coast and East Bank.
Despite the impression that the Guyana Police Force sometimes managed to convey, Rondell Rawlins was hardly associated with every crime involving firearms which took place in this country. Guyana is still awash with guns, particularly handguns like the Taurus which for the most part originate in Brazil. Unless the police can address the problem of gun-running across the Takutu and Corentyne Rivers in particular, citizens are really not going to see much diminution in the number of armed robberies which at present plague the nation. Then there is the matter of narcotics trafficking, which is at the root of so much of our crime – and so much of our gun crime especially. Until the government wraps its mind around addressing that issue and all its ramifications in a meaningful way, there will not be much of an impact on the general statistics of violent crime, as opposed to the high-profile mass slayings with which Rawlins was associated.
The administration to date has shown a certain reluctance to apply itself to considering the milieu which made it possible for Rawlins to easily recruit youngsters into his gang, including teenagers. The problem of poor educational facilities, lack of employment opportunities, the criminalization, so to speak, of a whole age cohort of youngsters from certain communities and the absence of recreational facilities in general for our young people are matters which the administration should take on board. Law and order is only one aspect of ensuring that citizens can live in peace. It is true that not all the social problems in our villages and urban areas can be rectified by government; some of the approaches to solutions have to be generated from within the communities themselves. However, it is the government’s obligation to listen to what the communities have to say and attempt to work with them in those areas where intervention from on high can actually make a difference.
The government has expended a lot of hot air on making a political connection with the Rawlins gang. But these were not “insurgents” in any political sense as some of the correspondents to this newspaper seemed to think. At no time did they ever expound on the ideology which inspired them; they were not the local equivalents of Shining Path or FARC guerillas, who use (or in the case of the former, used) criminal means to attain political ends. In this instance the ends themselves were more criminal than anything else.
It is true the gang members clearly hated the police and presumably the government which directed the police, but if it is true that it was Rondell Rawlins himself who phoned Kaieteur News referring to Lusignan, then personal revenge was what was dominating his thinking in that instance. Which doesn’t mean to say, of course, that when he took his band of killers into the village, he hadn’t selected the target to send an indirect message to the government at the same time. But it wasn’t part of some grand political vision which he espoused. And as for Bartica, the evidence suggests it was primarily about money and guns, and the men killed on the stelling were potential witnesses to the direction the gunmen had taken in making good their escape.
So now it seems we have reached the final act of the Rondell Rawlins drama. Without that threat hanging over the nation, the government and the ruling party will have space to come out of the laager and go into contemplative mode and perhaps look reality in the eye for a change. The endless propaganda churned out by government spokesmen has done nothing to change the feeling of alienation that some communities feel. If the country is to progress, the government needs to take the dead weight of its absolute control off the body politic, and allow innovation and creative ideas some room for expression; it needs, as said above, to listen to the communities – really listen, and not just give them a hearing and then ignore them – and try and work with all groups rather than impose itself on all groups. Once the Rawlins gang goes out of existence and it feels more secure, the governing party will have an opportunity to open up. It is an opportunity which it should not let slip.
