The most memorable images of crime in 2008 were the massacres in Lusignan, Bartica and Lindo Creek which altogether claimed 31 human lives. The inhumanity of these monstrous mass murders – the most cold-blooded carnage in this country’s criminal history – sickened the country’s conscience to the core.
In their aftermath, the President convened a stakeholders’ consultation with social partners, and the Bourda Accord that emerged was thought at the time to be an honest attempt to build a broad-based consensus against violent crime. That could have been a memorable moment in the annals of public safety. Right-thinking Guyanese of all political persuasions, social classes and religious beliefs acknowledged that society was perched on the edge of a precipice and that only collective action could avert catastrophe.
The personal opinion of the Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Ralph Ramkarran, at the Republic Day celebrations in Florida, expressed the public will: “I believe that national unity is indispensable to the resolution of our political and social problems including the plague of criminality which we now face.”
Even as the smoke of the funeral pyres lifted, the hoped-for national unity started to evaporate. Once the police killed the country’s most wanted bandit Rondell Rawlins, who was blamed for all the mass murders, the common front approach against violent crime was forgotten. The administration lost its enthusiasm for implementing the provisions, fulfilling the promises and establishing the structures of security oversight prescribed by the Bourda Accord. That coincided with the neglect of its obligations under the interim memorandum of understanding for the Security Sector Reform Action Plan signed sixteen months ago by British High Commissioner, Mr Fraser Wheeler and Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon.
The administration’s own National Drug Strategy Master Plan for 2005-2009 that was launched three-and-a-half years ago has been crippled and will soon expire without ever having been implemented. The long-promised crime stoppers programme and Citizens’ Security Plan, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, also became a casualty of the administration’s strategic lethargy.
The administration persists in its self-harm by ignoring the recommendations of the annual reports – International Narcotics Control Strategy; Human Rights Practices; and Trafficking in Persons – concerned with human security and public safety. Largely because of this policy of neglecting agreed security plans and rejecting critical international reports, police reform languished and violent crime continued to flourish in 2008. The consequences are that general crime rates rose by thirty-six per cent and serious crimes by nine per cent in 2008, above the levels of 2007. This year, three persons were murdered every week and two armed robberies occurred every day, on average.
Miners are still at the mercy of gangs of armed bandits; two of this year’s massacres occurred in the police force’s most under-manned and under-resourced ‘E’ and ‘F’ Divisions in the near hinterland. Fishermen in coastal waters cry out for protection against pirates who attack, rob, strip their vessels of engines and other equipment and, occasionally, kill. The export-driven narcotics trade thrives; twice this month, shipments of commercial products containing quantities of concealed cocaine have been interdicted in Canada and the US Virgin Islands, respectively.
In the face of the administration’s indifference to security sector reform, it is difficult to imagine how public safety can be improved in 2009. On the other hand, it is easy to understand why the murderous violence that has been triggered by drugs, guns and gangs has made this country so dangerous in 2008 – a year that will be remembered as much for the atrocities perpetrated as for opportunities wasted.
