Dear Editor,
The shooting deaths of three protestors by police in the mining town struck me with a revolting sense of something gone terribly wrong in Guyana. How could this happen? Aren’t the police trained properly? Aren’t they supposed to follow the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) which require them to use teargas, rubber bullets and water cannon to disperse protestors?
I believe these shooting deaths should be treated as a stand-alone incident, and should not be tied to the cause of the protest. When four pro-government writers sought to connect the deaths to the cause of the protests, and raised other equivalency or frivolous issues, they are all trying to mitigate, excuse and absolve Minister Rohee for responsibility for these deaths. Try as hard as they might, the fact is all ministers are responsible for things that go terribly wrong in their ministries under the doctrine of ministerial responsibility.
Minister Rohee is a serial failure and it is high time for him to be relieved of his ministerial portfolio. It is the responsibility of President Ramotar not to allow the crisis to simmer; he should resolve it quickly and stop the haemorrhaging to the economy. Protecting Mr Rohee is an indication of the government’s desire to drag this thing out.
I studiously avoided getting involved with the arguments some of these gentlemen raised, namely, whether it is fair for the government to subsidise electricity costs for Linden, and have the rest of the country pay higher costs, because this issue has absolutely nothing to do with the violation of SOP rules and the use of live bullets to disperse protestors.
There is another more important issue: the gross mishandling that created the Linden crisis with its loss of lives, the burning of a school and other buildings, the interruption to commerce affecting interior districts, etc. This issue strikes at the heart of the whole issue of governance and politics in the country. The government is perceived as an Indian government; the township is African. We need to fundamentally change the politics of this country and develop new kinds of politics that would forge a new political culture, one that would allow the citizens to rise above race and help them create a new political and social consciousness.
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud
