Given his ineffectual performance at the helm of the Ministry of Home Affairs, it would have been wise for former minister Clement Rohee to employ his well-worn coy mode when he was asked about the new government’s controversial initiative to curb the sale of alcohol after 2 am; not that wise was ever an adjective that could be used to describe the former minister or his actions.
But it would not be incorrect to surmise that Mr Rohee would have found it difficult not to criticize anything the new government did and especially new Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan who has long borne the brunt of the PPP’s caustic remarks for all sorts of reasons, but mostly because he chose, years ago, to leave that party.
The 2 am bar closure announcement has generated some amount of controversy. Bar and club owners and their patrons are obviously against it. Some long-suffering Guyanese, who have faced noise nuisances and having their entrances blocked by drinkers’ vehicles are for it. Others feel it could have benefited from consultation, but the former home minister is the only one so far who sees it as a violation of the Guyanese culture, which according to him is shared with the Caribbean.
Mr Rohee has pronounced that the initiative is “not Guyanese,” because Guyana is a “very open and relaxed country.” He said further that he had chosen not to conform to the over 70-year-old law; that “bars and clubs remaining open after 2 am never led to any spike [in crime] and that there is no scientific data that anyone could provide [to prove that it did].” He also accused the government of not having an anti-crime plan. He chided the government for giving “people only two hours to sport,” while noting that in many cases they would be leaving one party at midnight, having already imbibed, to go to another.
What Mr Rohee did not say is what is Guyanese and he should, since he’s apparently an expert on the issue. Maybe for him it’s drinking until one is falling down drunk and no longer in control of one’s faculties. Perhaps it’s drinking until one’s judgement is impaired and then getting behind the wheel of a vehicle to drive to another spot to drink some more, putting one’s own life and the lives of others at risk. Or perchance it’s drinking to build Dutch courage to go home and physically, verbally, emotionally and mentally abuse one’s wife and family. Mr Rohee should enlighten us.
Mr Rohee’s view of Guyana as an open and relaxed country is surely one that is shared and applauded by the criminally minded. Because obviously, if a country is open and relaxed as opposed to one where laws and rules are enforced, lawlessness will flourish; and it has. It was under Mr Rohee’s tenure as home affairs minister—2006 to 2015—that gun crimes reached their peak and tipped over. Cocaine and marijuana smuggling also blossomed, feeding an underground economy that has been noticed and commented on the world over. It must have escaped Mr Rohee’s attention that the crime spike at this time of the year didn’t just begin. In fact, as we reported on Tuesday, late former police commissioner Henry Greene had said in 2010 that the police force had recognised a link between the upsurge in armed robberies for hard cash and big entertainment shows headlined by international artists during the July/August period. Greene had stated that this was according to police intelligence. There is no indication that any attempt was ever made to act on this information and it must be noted too that it was never challenged by the former home affairs minister or anyone else in the former government.
Mr Rohee made the point that there is no scientific data linking the hours of operations of nightspots and crime rates. But there is data that links the overindulgence in alcohol to domestic violence, fatal accidents, loss of production in workplaces and chronic non-communicable diseases, all of which impact the national purse and have implications for the nation as a whole. But maybe these things are of no relevance to Mr Rohee – just so long as the country can be open and relaxed and people can have more than two hours to sport.
As long as Mr Rohee is prepared to point out the speck in someone else’s eye, he should also attend to the boulder in his, which prevents him from seeing that he presided over the Home Affairs Ministry for nine years while crime grew to the stage at which it is today. However, there was apparently not enough time for him to involve all government ministries and agencies in holistic policy development to treat with crime and violence as he is now recommending.
