World coming to an end

Apr 16, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News-  “PPP supports call for a full, thorough, and professional investigation of the deaths of Ronaldo Peters, Dan Johnson” (Village Voice News, April 10-2025). The PPP? Really? Somebody dropped the ball with that lovely development in the midst of ugly tragedy. Two of them. The PPP must not have anybody in the Guyana Police Force to protect.

Unless, it is a sucker punch to the face of the Hon. Robeson Benn, Minister of Home Affairs. When something like this (“full…investigation”) emerges out of the PPP, what is it that the party could be up to? Yeah, what does that banna called Bharrat have up his sleeve? This is too good to be true. The world must be coming to an end when the PPP supports a “professional investigation” into those two untimely and grisly deaths. Perhaps, the world already did end, save that nobody bothered to inform the Guyanese people.

For ages, Guyanese have heard a constant refrain. Just a few rogue cops, only a few. (Be patient, that’s to be addressed later). Today, the focus is on the newly law-abiding and caring PPP that is all about what is bright and right. Why? What is in it for the PPP when it joins in calls for a proper investigation into the deaths of Messrs. Peters and Johnson? When the PPP was in the political wilderness during the 1960s to the 1990s, it held the premier national law enforcement agency in the worst light. Given its bitter experiences and prolonged victimizations, the party was justified in its assessments and conclusions. Rather smartly, and regrettably also, when the PPP came into power, the utility of the Guyana Police Force as an instrument of political ill-will took shape, came into full flower. What worked so well for the PNC could execute the same legwork and spadework (aka dirty work) with the PPP as the new beneficiary. I have always said that this Guyana of ours is one of endless shocks. The aftershocks are the deadlier species.

Guyanese have had front row seats, plus those with faces to the floor, with the Guyana Police hailed as ‘crimefighters’ and ‘frontline holders’ of the bridge maintaining the thin line between civilization and chaos. It so happened that some of the heralded crimefighters of the PPP State turned out to be among the aiders, robbers, and hustlers. And murderers. Some who wore black clothes left Guyanese blue in the face, which turned out to be their lucky day. Along with the black clothes, there were those in plainclothes who bloodied, brutalized, and left Guyanese deader than a corpse six feet under and older than six years. Guyanese had a name for the ones in plainclothes, thanks to that departed PPP wizard, Dr. Roger Luncheon: phantoms. If is nah hee, den is mee.

I just remembered something extraordinary. One veteran PPP minister, now national do-gooder, was the first who spoke of a ‘few bad apples’ in the police. Apparently, his schooling stopped before it reached examinations and discussions about what those few do to the whole barrel.

Still more extravagantly, it was that same stalwart who went before a Commission of Inquiry about the three police killings in the same Linden township, and who had a long bout of the sudden onset of amnesia. The man recalled absolutely nothing, not one shred, not one lousy scrap. Amnesia or dementia? Sanctity or perjury? Or, someone taking the Fifth, under the banner of the rights of first refusal? Guyanese watched with disbelief as the PPP ministerial luminary went from the man who knew too much to the man who knew nothing at all. Is this a country with people, or one of that Temptations lamentation: Papa was a rolling stone? That is, when people in the PPP are needed to stand up and speak up in these parts, they are nowhere to be found.

With that as its history, it is the same PPP that now steps up to seize the limelight from the PNC, the AFC, the WPA, and assorted other outraged and disgusted Guyanese calling for an independent probe into what really happened in the police killings of Messrs. Ronaldo Peters and Dan Johnson. It is said that the loudest mourners and handwringers at a wake house are the professional ones, those who have had the benefit of a nice paycheck and long practice. It is my dubious honour, one that I would prefer not to have, to nominate the PPP to be the most fitting for that role. Meaning, the one of professional tear shedders and with a bucket of wet handkerchiefs, as proof.

Orin Boston, late of Dartmouth, the PPP Government said, had a gun. The same was said by the same PPP Government of the departed Quindon Bacchus. Both were felled by the police, one in his bed. But now the wily PPP stands resolutely in support of calls for a full, deep-dive, professional probe into the deaths of Ronaldo Peters and Dan Johnson. Guyana is so gifted with clowns and comics, the PPP believes that I am all two in one. What a party! What an upstanding country! The world must have ended, but the news was kept from me.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) 

 

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