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Nothing really changes

Jan 08, 2011 Editorial

The New Year has arrived and there are many resolutions. Some people are going to surrender some of the things that they knew that they should not have been doing. These would include certain bad habits. For the greater part, everyone is going to promise to be better than they were during the past year.
Making resolutions is an annual thing that merely suggests that people appreciate welcoming the dawn of a New Year. Indeed, many people do not live to see this New Year in the same way that many of those now welcoming 2011 will not be around to see the end of it.
No one has ever done a survey in Guyana to ascertain how many people have become veritable saints having promised every year to be better and better. What is known is that most of those making promises reneged on those promises within a week. For them, merely making the promises was enough of a task to show that they were serious about living to welcome the New Year.
We know that this is the case because there are rarely any road fatalities during the early weeks of the year. It is as if people make a special effort to be careful while they use the roadways. How sad that this does not continue for the remainder of the year.
By now, though, many people have come to recognise that not much has changed in the New Year. There are still the protests, the violent acts that have left people dead and of course, the gun crimes. We have already commented on the irresponsible use of the roads that has led to at least four deaths.
If we are to examine the violent acts we would find that some people are increasingly bent on doing as they please. A man beats a woman senseless with a cutlass because he believes that she is being unfaithful. The rule of law would suggest that if two people cannot agree then they should go their separate ways. The stronger should not impose his will.
Then there was the young man who killed his wife before he killed himself. He too claimed that his wife was not playing by the rules. He saved the state by killing himself but the resort to violence leaves a lot to be desired.
There are the armed robbers who prey on people who worked hard to achieve whatever they had. One would have thought that the gunmen would have disappeared by now, given that the police, during their preparations for the Christmas holidays, had prided themselves for removing most of the guns from the streets, thus forcing people to borrow guns to commit crimes.
From the evidence, it would seem that there are many guns still out there. There were weapons on hand when a gunman killed a young man in New Amsterdam shortly after the dawn of the New Year.
Then there were guns in Linden when a gunman shot a businessman. Just two days ago, there were guns in Kaneville when a gunman shot another businessman. This latter victim is critical.
Sociologists would be hard pressed to justify this level of criminal activity in a country that is heading along the road to prosperity if the politicians are to be believed. They say that money is in the system and employment is abegging in the housing and construction industry.
Perhaps this is the case but that those who are now ensconced in a life of crime are in no position to capitalize because they lack the requisite skills.
Indeed there are people who can lead no other life. One would have expected that by now the police would have been able to identify the areas where these people operate and would have increased their presence there. But they say that they do not have sufficient numbers and therefore cannot be everywhere.
They were out in their numbers when the grenade exploded outside Stabroek Market and it took them days before they could identify the dead man because people still refuse to cooperate with law enforcement. This should have been a New Year resolution. It surely is not for some.
Indeed the more things change the more they remain the same. The year has changed but the people’s attitudes have not.

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