The events of last Tuesday are an illustration to President Irfaan Ali, if he was unaware of it before, just how precarious the stability of the society really is. Furthermore, he would have discovered, if not confirmed, how little trust the African constituency has in either him or his government. That the majority of the population, of whatever ethnicity, has absolutely no trust in the Guyana Police Force is hardly news to anyone, and one imagines that that much at least would be no revelation to him either.
Even if the President was not altogether sensitive to the underlying causes of the most recent violent protest, both he and his Minister of Home Affairs had history to guide them, so there was no excuse therefore for not requiring the police to work on various contingency plans to deal with situations which had the potential to spiral out of control. As is now well known the police fired rubber bullets indiscriminately at Golden Grove, hitting civilians who were just going about their daily business and were not part of the protest, and then failed to manage the crowd which built up as it proceeded down the East Coast road, finally ending in violence at Mon Repos market.
At the time of his swearing in almost two years ago the President made a commitment to strengthen the disciplined forces, especially the Police Force. “Every citizen, every home and every business place must feel safe from criminals and from crime,” he had said at the time. In relation to the police he promised training, modern equipment, adequate vehicles and a rapid response capacity. Since then there has been an upgrade where the provision of vehicles and equipment is concerned, but certainly there was no evidence of a rapid response on Tuesday, and in the case of Mon Repos no response of any kind at all.
Apart from the quality of recruits, a matter which has been raised in recent times, and the lack of racial diversity in the Force, which is not going to improve in the short term since Indians have always shown a singular reluctance to join up, the GPF is shackled by two major problems. The first of these is that our politicians, particularly those on the PPP side, are unable to make the distinction between a professional and a politicised Force. Owing to the fact that they want to feel safe with an African dominated Police Force, they have caused it to fragment by linking with those officers who will respond to political demands. It cannot function efficiently in such conditions, let alone professionally. The second major problem is corruption, which no Commis-sioner has confronted in any meaningful way.
For all of that there is still no excuse for not devising rapid response plans for emergencies, and for not identifying vulnerable areas, like the Mon Repos market because it is Indian dominated. The police know the form, the Minister of Home Affairs knows the form, and they both know the men on bicycles – and now motorcycles too – will come out if they have enough crowd cover. The President must set up some kind of investigation into what happened – not a formal Commission of Inquiry which would be well-nigh useless in these circumstances, but an internal inquiry of some sort to find out what transpired and why the police failed so dramatically.
The police, however, are only one element in the stability equation, and they come into play only after trouble has broken out, While the proximate cause of the Tuesday protests was an item of fake news on a social media site, it was posted at a time of tension and suspicion. It must be apparent even to the President that before this post appeared protests of a peaceful nature had been going on for three weeks demanding that the policeman who shot Quindon Bacchus be charged. Despite the fact that the acting Commissioner of Police Clifton Hicken assured the relatives that the matter had been handed to the Police Complaints Authority, and despite the fact that President Ali implored them to let the institutions do their work, no one believed that justice was being pursued.
In other words, the head of state can talk as he might about unity, the reality is that the divide is as pronounced as ever it was. In addition to the difficult economic circumstances of the present time, the African constituency considers it has not just been excluded from government, but from all the advantages and benefits which flow from being in government. Decisions are being taken about the country in which they have no say, and as has happened before they feel that contracts are not being given out equitably.
Whatever the truth of the situation in any given instance, the issue is one of perception and a sense of exclusion. And that gives rise to a feeling of mistrust and a rejection of reasonable arguments as in this case that collecting evidence takes time, and processes have to be followed before a report can be produced and if appropriate, charges laid. We are back to a situation where the truth is not regarded with any objectivity; it resides in what one or the other political party says, or as in the case of Mr Bacchus, in a source which confirms a conviction, no matter how unreliable the source.
President Ali together with this government has brought a lot of this on himself. They gave the impression early on in their incumbency that they thought the opposition constituency could be divorced from the political party associated with it if they delivered benefits to them. That has proved to be a mistake. It was accompanied by a refusal to deal with APNU+AFC on the grounds that the latter would not recognise the PPP/C as a legitimate government, so that it would not meet the Leader of the Opposition even to discuss constitutional appointments. If the President was serious about unity, it would be necessary for him to talk to the representatives of almost half the electorate.
Following the appointment of Mr Aubrey Norton as Leader of the Opposition a meeting with the President was held, but with the total lack of trust between the two sides things did not mesh, and the head of state went ahead and appointed the Integrity and Police Service Commissions unilaterally. This has resulted in Mr Norton filing a court action challenging the appointments of the chairs of the two commissions because he was not “meaningfully consulted” before the appointments were made, as is required by law. The whole saga seems to have been so avoidable. Considering that the President refused to meet the Opposition Leader for many months, a bit of patience would have been in order now if he truly wanted to achieve his aim of a unified nation.
We have the same confusion with the appointment of a police commissioner. The head of state gave the assurance in early March this year that the constitution would be followed when it came to appointing this particular officer. He must have changed his mind, because subsequent to that he appointed Mr Clifton Hicken as the acting Commissioner, relying on a doctrine of necessity. Now following the debacle of the Tuesday protest where Mr Hicken demonstrated he could not keep the government constituency safe, he has decided to invite Mr Norton to make written submissions on a temporary appointment to that post.
This is not to say that the opposition refusal to recognise the government in particular is not exceedingly irksome not to mention senseless. But it is the PPP/C which is in office, and it is this party which has its hands on all the levers of power. If concessions are to be made, therefore, it has to make them, because the coalition has little formal space to negotiate except as it relates to constitutional appointments. It could do more if the parliamentary committees were working properly, but there needs to be a whole new look at Parliament and how it operates. It is unlikely that the government is interested in reform there, its constitutional undertakings notwithstanding.
While the PPP is no longer a Marxist party, it nevertheless still retains some of the habits of its Leninist-Stalinist roots, insofar as it likes to control everything. It does not appreciate autonomous bodies, and that includes the EPA, which is why it got rid of Dr Vincent Adams. It does not like criticism of its policies from any quarter or suggestions from those with whom it is not associated, even if they do not belong to the opposition. Civil society bodies which have spoken out have been derided, and major government projects are treated as sacrosanct and are frequently lacking in transparency. Acting appointments, such as those which currently obtain in the case of the Chancellor and Chief Justice suit the party, because the President has control over acting appointments. The President has so far refused to meet his opposition counterpart on making substantive appointments to the highest posts in the judiciary as is required by the Constitution.
The government is still trying to control the City Council, which is an opposition entity, although the week before last it was challenged by the residents of South Georgetown who understood well the administration’s political games. After 23 years their stratagems came to naught, so why do they think they would work now?
If President Ali really wants to move towards ‘One Guyana’ the party he represents needs a revolution in attitude, something which one doubts will happen. No modern democracy can be locked down so tight that the concerns of opposition constituents are not taken into account. Citizens need to breathe; if they can’t the government will always be looking over its shoulder in case there is a steam kettle effect, as there was last week.
