A move toward dictatorship?

Dec 30, 2010 Editorial

There are some things that are among the inalienable rights of an individual. There are no substitutes for these things and they therefore should not be taken lightly. For example, there are no substitutes for life. Neither are there any for liberty. So treasured is liberty that Patrick Henry, an American patriot on March 23, 1775 proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Henry was imploring the Virginia House of Burgess that they needed to donate troops to the revolution to fight if they were to avoid surrendering the hope of being free. That was one year before the United States became independent; it was made at the height of the fight against the British. The words, “Give me liberty or give me death” later became the battle cry for many in the field. In the audience that day when Henry made his famous speech were future Presidents of the United States, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
Those words, ‘give me liberty or give me death’ were later echoed in numerous languages, including French, in the midst of some battles for the very right to enjoy liberty.
The Guyana constitution talks about the rights and freedoms. The right to life is so sacrosanct that there is the adage that it is better for ninety-nine guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be executed. The result is that these rights are entrenched rights. In most democracies the right to liberty is so strong that the police only make arrests when they are certain that they have an airtight case. In that country they have sent innocent people to jail to such an extent that in recent years the country began paying compensation to those who lost their years because they were wrongly deprived of their liberties.
Generally, the police, in any democracy, would conduct thorough investigations and only detain when they are absolutely certain that the subject may be guilty and needed to be prosecuted. In Guyana, this is not the case because people’s liberties are lightly treated or ignored. At the drop of a hat the police rush to imprison an individual and this is so because they have the power to do so.
Cases of this are all too numerous to mention. Motorists complain about a traffic rank stopping them, taking possession of their documents and inviting them to the nearest police station. Quite a few have been detained for long periods. Freddie Kissoon has written ad nauseam about the truck driver who transported some school children to the city for a protest and who ended up spending time in the Brickdam lockups.
This was highly irregular. People are not detained for traffic offences in any part of the world unless they pose a threat to life and limb through effective use of alcohol, or unless they had killed someone on the roads.
Mark Benschop, no stranger to conflict with the police, has often been locked up for nothing more than trivial reasons. More recently, he spent almost 72 hours in the lock ups for a traffic offence. The same thing happened to the very Freddie Kissoon because the police perceived that the state saw both Mark Benschop and Freddie KIssoon, as irritants and therefore if they were locked up the state would be happy and the police would get kudos. This is akin to a dog doing tricks to please its master and to get a treat.
Over the Christmas holidays an actor got picked up on the streets, was taken to the lock ups and was made to remain there for three days before they released him without any remorse. This is a blatant abuse of power and a disregard for the people of this country. It is a show that the police can pick up and detain anyone on a whim and fancy.
It is a frightening development and one must now wonder whether these are the tiny steps to a dictatorship. By no stretch of imagination can the Police Commissioner justify these arrests and it is he who presides over the police force. The Minister of Home Affairs also says nothing, suggesting that he condones the action of the police.
Worse of all, the chief lawmaker, the Attorney General is mum and almost invisible. If the powers that be sit and condone such illegalities then, it is only a matter of time before the state begins to kill people on whims and fancies, with impunity. It could also be the prelude to lawlessness because there are going to be people who would protest in the most violent way.
Liberties should not be restricted lightly but Guyana appears to be ignoring this entreaty.

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