President David Granger is also leader of the People’s National Congress (PNC), which is the overwhelmingly largest “partner” in A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), the larger partner of the coalition Government, on whose behalf he has launched what has been described by his official spokesperson as the first of a number of Commissions of Inquiry (CoIs) into what the President has labelled the “Jagdeo era” killings. The nested, Matryoshka-like President began by launching a CoI into the Lindo Creek Massacre of June 2008, the last of a long series of massacres that occurred in the first decade of the millennium. This is not a very auspicious beginning to investigating what is universally acknowledged as the most challenging period in our 50 years of independence.
Firstly, there is the answer to the question posed by the Bard: to wit, there is a lot in a name. If the President were serious about seeking to bring some kind of closure to what he has also described as “the troubles”, he would not seek to make the CoI “outcome determinative” through his very transparent ‘labelling’ technique. Would Mr Granger, say, go along with describing the Jonestown mass suicide as a “Burnham era” mass suicide? An even better case can be made for Burnham’s involvement in that horrific killing of 909 souls since he facilitated Jim Jones and his cult at every step of the way in their lemming-like action. An even more recent event, the PNC’s objection to the People’s Progressive Party’s motion to launch a CoI into the “assassination” of Walter Rodney as being “outcome determinative”, should remind Mr Granger that serious Inquiries should not be politicised ab initio.
Secondly, there is the matter of starting at the end of the killing cycle that riveted the country for over a decade. It is rather elementary to grasp that the Lindo Creek killings at a minimum may be involved with the other atrocities and, therefore, it would make more sense from the standpoint of explanatory value if the Inquiries could start from the beginning of the cycle – namely 1997. Mr Sam Hinds, who was both President and Prime Minister around that time, wrote a letter in which he gave reasons for that starting point.
The PNC had protested the PPP win at the internationally-observed December 5, 1997 elections and staged mass protests that got out of hand on several occasions. On January 12, 1998, for instance, hundreds were beaten and assaulted in Georgetown and the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), in an abundance of caution not to be ethnically provocative, issued a caution to “supporters of the PPP” to avoid Georgetown. From that horrific incident onwards, criminal matters continued to careen out of control as robberies, kidnappings, murders, arson and protests escalated.
With the Mash Day 2002 Camp Street Prison escape of five hardened, convicted criminals that ratcheted up the crime wave, criminal matters took an overtly political turn when the criminals, now ensconced in Buxton, defined themselves as “African Freedom Fighters”. In the sarcastic words of WPA executive Eusi Kwayana, they were being guided by “political sophisticates”. As hundreds were killed in a confusing crossfire between the Buxton gang, Phantom Gangs and drug gangs, there were many who feared for the continued existence of the Guyanese State, as the official institutions of law and order were made into bystanders.
If there are to be CoIs that will benefit Guyana and not merely serve to settle old scores or cover up the sins of those who have been involved in the criminality but are now part of officialdom, we must start at the beginning of the political crime wave which began in January 1998. There are too many loose ends that have already been exposed to the public such as full-page ads taken out by one of the drug dealers as well as a most incriminating tape by a senior politician and a senior police officer after one of the most gruesome massacres – at Agricola.
Closure must be brought to all the killings.
