by Keith Williams
I have never seen on any nation where it is demanded that some segment of the population resign themselves to the inevitable outcome that their lives will once again be ordered by a man who as President was at the very least criminally negligent in his stewardship of the Country. Guyana has never had a perfect leader or a perfect Government. But Guyana has had only one leader whose attitude and conduct while in office clearly and unquestioningly demonstrated that certain population groups had no rights which he felt duty bound to respect.
How dare people ask us to be comfortable with the prospect of our sons, our brothers, our fathers again falling prey to the hateful stewardship we experience in Guyana under Bharat Jagdeo. How dare the silly pundits in Guyana, many of whom do not give a rats ass about the concern and fears in that particular community, demanding that we react as though it is political business as usual. How dare they, in their intellectual laziness and their malingering acuity, continue to masturbate their egos and narcissistic personality at the expense of and risk to our sons, our brothers, our uncles, our fathers.
There is a concept of “the buck stops here” in leadership. It was a concept that was accepted and argued when the PNC was in power. Every negative occurrence in the nation during their tenure was attributed to them. They were held responsible for what happened under their watch, but nothing as atrocious as what occurred under the PPP’s watch incidented the tenure of the PNC.
Whether it came from the WPA, the PPP, the Churches, civil society, Burnham and the PNC was considered accountable for the death of Walter Rodney. The arguments ran the gamut with the most ubiquitous being that since Burnham and the PNC controlled the country, Rodney was their political nemesis and challenge their administration they had reason to murder him. But examine how this reasoning changed with respect to the assassination of Ronald Waddell and Courtney Crum-Ewing, both whom were political nemesis of the PPP and its leaders, and were challenging their leadership.
Attach to that the finding of the US agent Cassandra Jackson who found that, “Khan was ultimately able to control the cocaine industry in Guyana, in large part, because he was backed by a paramilitary squad that would murder, threaten, and intimidate others at Khan’s directive. Khan’s enforcers committed violent acts and murders on Khan’s orders that were directly in furtherance of Khan’s drug trafficking conspiracy.” She found that “…At home in Guyana, Khan seemed to enjoy a charmed existence of immunity from arrest and prosecution. His mistake, however, was to enter Suriname − a more law-abiding jurisdiction. There, his cocaine-constructed house of cards collapsed with his dramatic arrest in Paramaribo….”. That “… Khan’s arrest showed the stark contrast in the quality of governance between the two states. Suriname’s Chandrikapersad Santokhi deemed Shaheed Khan a threat to the national security of Guyana and Suriname and other countries and linked him to plots to assassinate government and judicial officials in that country. According to Santokhi, international agencies, including those in the USA, had been looking for him. On the other hand, Guyana’s Minister of Home Affairs at the time Gail Teixeira formally indicated to Suriname that the government had “no interest” in seeking Khan’s return at that time….”
So when people argue that discussion on the elections should not encompass connecting issues you must ask yourself, what are their motives? What are their agendas?
What all of this circumscribes is that there is little or no concern for the loved ones of those who died during Khan’s vigilante crusade, and little or no concern about the fears and trepidation of the community he targeted. He targeted a community that did not vote for the political organization he supported and that organization never publicly condemned his actions or called for its cessation. That silence from officialdom that was under a legal and ethical obligation to take action was considered as approval for the actions of the vigilante gangs. Anywhere else in this world that silent collusion would have galvanized actions by the international community. The fact that it did not force us to come to grips with the reality we ignored in broad daylight and now being confronted with its most frightening manifestations.
