Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 31, 2013 Editorial
Shock waves reverberated around the country Tuesday evening. Former Home Affairs Minister and current General Secretary of the People’s National Congress Reform, Oscar Clarke, had been shot. He had just returned home with his wife who was expecting some relatives.
Four young men, said to be no more than boys, entered the yard and placed a gun to Clarke wife’s head and proceeded to rob the family. This is most remarkable and it tells the story of the level to which the society has descended.
Generally, prominent people in the society are not interfered with simply because they are respected as national leaders. Further, Guyana still has a culture of worshiping those who are prominent perhaps because the society recognizes that some time there are people who would have to turn to these people for some form of assistance.
When gunmen targeted a serving Minister of Agriculture, Satyadeow Sawh, and killed him and other members of his household, they had stepped over the line but then one must wonder whether the line had not been removed already. A young man waved a middle finger at a presidential motorcade, young people swear at the top of their voices when they pass by police stations and sometimes one can hear these expletives as one sits in the hallowed halls of the National Assembly.
Many can still remember when policemen, who were considered to be above reproach, suddenly began to die in the streets. Gunmen targeted them to the extent that many were even afraid to wear their uniforms in public. Surely the lines had been removed but people did not take notice.
In the case of the killing of policemen there were those who simply said that the police had overstepped the line when they started to be judge, jury and executioner. And policemen almost with impunity, simply killed those whom they pursued.
But for the most part senior public servants who were well known are not interfered with by the criminal elements. These people are supposed to be the foundation of the society and people do not rock the foundation.
Oscar Clarke’s shooting now begs the question of whether the society has collapsed to the point of no return. When Kaieteur News did what any newspaper worth its sale would do—publish the strength of a former President’s security detail, Guyana Times announced that former President Bharrat Jagdeo’s life was under threat.
The newspaper could only write that because it recognized that society has degenerated. At no time in the history of this country have criminal elements gone after national leaders. No retired police commissioner or very senior police officer could testify to being made to suffer at the hands of gunmen. The same could be said for the people in the military.
We must now review what is happening in the society. Is it that we simply cannot provide meaningful employment for the young people? Is it that the school system is generating more people with criminal intent?
Just this past week, there were reports of two stabbings in a school compound. That was unheard of not so long ago. Of course there were fights but these were merely emotional release among young children. Now these fights have turned deadly. There was the case of a schoolgirl killing a grown woman in a city schoolyard. And there was the schoolgirl who stabbed and killed her uncle because he insisted that she remain at home in the absence of her mother.
The lines must have been removed.
There is one other turn to the Oscar Clarke shooting. It occurred in a location where the people overwhelmingly support the political party to which Clarke belongs. The perpetrators come from that community; they come from the homes where they would have heard their parents sing adulation to the party.
Did the perpetrators not know that the home was that of a person who served the party for which their parents walked the streets in protest? Have we reached the stage where crime knows no bounds?
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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