(This is one of a series of weekly columns from Guyanese in the diaspora and others with an interest in issues related to Guyana and the Caribbean)
By Alissa Trotz
Alissa Trotz is the editor of the In the Diaspora column.
The lead story in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek said it all, ‘Crimes by joint services at all-time high in 2009’. There have been stories that offer a different image, like reports of the professional and selfless efforts of soldiers to descend Kaieteur Falls to return the body of a young woman to her grieving family, of Guyanese soldiers offering hurricane relief in various Caribbean islands. Some are not reported and take place behind the scenes, like the ongoing efforts of ex-army officers’ groups in the diaspora to provide support to military pensioners at home. Yet these have been overshadowed by the numerous examples of illegal actions committed by officers in uniform, most spectacularly the violence visited on Dweive Ramdass by coastguards and on the 15 year old and two other men by police in their attempt to force a confession to the murder of Ramenauth Bisram. While there have been disagreements over responsibility for this situation, media outlets in Guyana appear for once to concur that public confidence in the country’s disciplined services has been severely eroded.
In the region political independence was supposed to deliver us from racial and economic oppression, and to replace a colonial military presence with one that would defend the interests of each newly independent country. But there are many examples where independence has not halted the use of coercive power against working people, to maintain the interests of the powerful; the military dictatorships of Latin America spring readily to mind. And external militarization is not a thing of the past either. US military bases are expanding across Latin America to protect American interests, while the US military base at Guantanamo has for many come to stand for excess and abuse justified in the name of a war on terror.
Closer to home, when Martin Carter penned his poem from a colonial jail in British Guiana in 1953, ‘This is the dark time my love’, those words were aimed directly at the British soldiers who had come in to enforce the suspension of our constitution:
Who comes walking in the dark night time?
Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass
It is the man of death, my love, the strange invader
Watching you sleep and aiming at your dream.
Can we say that Carter’s words have never been applicable since, in a different kind of way? Unless we bury our heads in the sand, we cannot deny the fact that this poem could speak to Guyana in the post-independence period. At least one documentary and several books have documented the army’s involvement in the rigging of Guyanese elections (and I could be wrong, but for some reason I have a childhood memory of a haunting painting by Bernadette Persaud that offers a visual interpretation of this poem during those difficult years). In the current moment we witness the disturbing stories in the media implicating our joint services in various brutal transgressions and unthinkable acts of violence against civilians. What happens when a population fears and distrusts those – the police, the military – entrusted to defend you? Who will guard the guard? And who will bell the cat?
A Features piece in the December 5th issue of Chronicle called on “honest members of the joint services, who are committed to their profession and their mandate of service and protection to the nation, who pride themselves on their professionalism, and who respect their uniform and honour the organization through which they serve their country, to say ‘enough is enough.’ ” True, but no suggestions were offered as to how to get us beyond the current situation. In a speech to the armed forces in December, President Jagdeo, Commander-in-Chief, commented along the same lines, “…when you have transgressions, and there will be transgressions now and in the future, we have to deal with these; but it doesn’t mean that we will forget what the institution stands for…I will not succumb to the critics out there and blame the army and the police for everything.”
Agreed, but precisely how will these transgressions be dealt with? The Commander-in-Chief did not spell these out.
In September the Stabroek News, in a thoughtful piece called Guyana’s Defence Policy Dilemma, cited from a 2007 address by an officer of the armed services, Colonel Bruce Lovell, who noted that a systematic approach was warranted: “We have to radically redesign our processes to be true to our mandate and this therefore impels us to critically examine issues such as our roles, our doctrine and our structure and organization.” In this vein we need to ask what became of the Disciplined Forces Commission, which was constituted to address precisely these kinds of issues. This I believe was close to seven years ago, at the height of the wave of violence sweeping the country. At the time the Guyanese public was told that the Commission was expected to present its findings and recommendations within six months, and that the report would, upon acceptance by the National Assembly, be implemented within a specified time frame and closely monitored.
To be sure, it is entirely possible that the joint services are working quietly to fix things, but a behind the scenes approach will never win public confidence compared to a transparent process. This is even more so given the general and current climate of distrust and suspicion. If the Commission submitted its report, then the trail leads to the National Assembly and the political directorate. Guyanese need to press our parliamentarians and the political directorate for clear answers. Who will tell us, especially in light of the events of the past year, whether this report ever made it to the National Assembly? If it did and it was accepted, was a timeline attached, and what has become of its recommendations? Were its recommendations folded into other initiatives like the Security Sector Reform Action Plan (a Stabroek News December article by David Granger suggests that it was)? As far as we know this plan is currently at a crossroads following the withdrawal of British funding and a vague promise from Dr. Roger Luncheon that public funds from the Government of Guyana would ensure implementation. I say vague because there have been few specifics, figures or timelines offered the public so far, which we should see as unacceptable given the urgency of the security situation.
It has become easy to forget that elected politicians are there because it is the people, through their taxes, who pay them, and it is to the people that they are accountable, and to whom they must answer. Moreover, we simply cannot afford to politicize this impasse on security sector reform in narrow partisan terms. With few exceptions Guyanese politicians have done a superb job of this, and we have allowed them to continue dividing us from ourselves and from each other on matters that jointly affect us like this one does now. It is really time to say to them all, ‘enough is enough’. The continued relevance of some of Martin Carter’s poetry is no cause for celebration.
This is the dark time, my love,
All round the land brown beetles crawl about
The shining sun is hidden in the sky
Red flowers bend their heads in awful sorrow
This is the dark time, my love,
It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears.
It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery
Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious
Who comes walking in the dark night time?
Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass
It is the man of death, my love, the stranger invader
Watching you sleep and aiming at your dream.
(Martin Carter, Poems of Resistance, 1954)
