It was a matter of commonsense

Jul 22, 2010 Editorial

During the visit of the Kuwaiti Prime Minister and his delegation the traveling public was made to suffer the inability to move about as freely as they normally would. There were traffic jams because the major roads were closed for hours—at least for three hours.
Minibuses plying the West Demerara route were either trapped in the city or were forced to remain on their side of the river. The result was that commuters had no option but to use the speedboat service which, fortunately, was as efficient as it could be.
Those in Georgetown fared much worse. They could not access the East Bank Demerara which is the only road between the city and the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, and by extension, the communities along the Soesdyke-Linden Highway.
The reason was simple. Guyana was ensuring adequate security during the visit of the Kuwaiti Prime Minister and his delegation. It is not unusual for countries to close off certain areas during visits of state officials.
In neighbouring Trinidad, the officials closed off an entire area during the Fifth Summit of the Americas that United States President Barack Obama and Senator Hilary Clinton and a host of world leaders attended.
The area was the red zone that was off limits to regular vehicular traffic. But this did not mean that those who lived in the area could not access their places of work. They were given special passes. Even more, they were informed at least three weeks ahead of the summit. There were other areas that were designated green areas which meant that the level of security was slightly lower.
However, the country placed special vehicles to move about in these restricted areas so that there was no obstruction of people’s movement.
This was not the case in Guyana perhaps because the visit was so short and because the country simply does not have the number of vehicles to designate them for special use. But there was no need to shut down all movement.
In the first instance the official word was that the Kuwaitis would have arrived shortly after midday. This timing was adjusted twice. Meanwhile the authorities maintained the road closure as though the visit would have begun at the earlier time.
In this day and age with advanced communication systems one would have expected that at the drop of a hat the authorities could have closed any particular section of the roadway.
For example, as soon as the visitors landed the word could have gone out to the police to close the roadway at a given location and redirect traffic.
As the motorcade reaches another checkpoint, with the use of the communication system, word could be sent ahead to close another section of the roadway.
At the same time, the roadway closed earlier could be reopened. Should the authorities have adopted this system there would not have been the marked inconvenience for such a long period.
We are not robots who could only operate in keeping with our programming. We are rational people and we should function along the lines of commonsense.
Perhaps the prime focus was on security and the view was that if no one traversed the roads then the threat would have been drastically minimized. But the simply placing of ranks and patrols along the route would have served the same purpose.
And in any case, we are not a violent people. The infiltrators? They would have stood out. We insist that there was no need to restrict the movement of Guyanese for so long.
One thing that has been learnt is that we are a disciplined people when forced to be. The authorities said ‘Keep off the roads’ and we complied although we fumed.
There will be other state visits and it is hoped that those who reviewed the visit would recognize that there is no need for the rigid exercise that inconvenienced the populace.

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It was a matter of commonsense

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