A look at the current need for accountability

Mar 28, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
There is no greater hypocrisy than selective outrage, and the letter by Vassan Ramracha titled, “Must the ERC or Granger atone for 1973” reeks of hypocrisy. Let’s look at this objectively.
Because David Granger was an Officer in the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) and is now a candidate for the presidency of Guyana, Ramracha engages in leaps of acrobatic logic and fantasy in order to impugn his character and create the type of political platform incumbents do when they have nothing else to offer. Sometimes I wonder if people really think before they sit at their computers and pound out such nonsense.
Ramracha’s logic is, David Granger was an Officer in the army, so by virtue of that position he has to account for an incident in 1973, when a contingent of the army used force and three people were killed. And that was almost 40 years ago. Well how about this Miss Ramracha. Less than 10 years ago, a Minister of Home Affairs in this current regime was exposed by a whistle blower for being head of a vigilante squad. That whistle blower was killed, but not before his brother who looked very much like him was also killed. The fact that a tame commission, unlike the one that investigated the shootings of 1973, found no evidence of the Minister’s involvement, does not remove the evidential indictment against that Minister.
The Minister in his defence over having contact with a known vigilante killer was that he was gathering information on criminality. Well excuse me. That is not the duty or within the ambit of authority of the Minister of Home Affairs. The Minister of Home Affairs is a civilian, and not authorised to carry out the functions of law enforcement officers. These functions are reserved for those who have taken an oath of office that confers that status upon them, and empowers them after rigorous training to carry out such functions.
There is nothing in the Police Act, the Laws of Guyana, or the Constitution of Guyana, that confers authority upon any civilian administrative official to act in the capacity of a Law Enforcement Officer, whether it is gathering information or being the general of a killing squad.
That the commission accepted these facetious excuses for the Minister’s contact with a known vigilante killer influences my views that it was a tame commission assigned to give cover to one of the more sordid eras in Guyana’s history. And that was less than 10 years ago.
Further, anywhere else in this civilized world where a whistle blower points a finger of accusation at an official of state and is subsequently killed, that official would face criminal charges. Although motive is not an essential element in murders, its presence is a key factor in determining who stood to benefit most from the death of the victim. One would have to stretch the circumstances of coincidence to the limit to disassociate the gunning down of the brother of a whistle blower who closely resembled him, and the subsequent killing of that whistle blower before he had time to testify before a commission, from his accusations against the then Minister of Home Affairs.
If we are asking for accounting from people because of their employment and position at the time 40 years ago, how much more compelling is the argument for accountability from those affiliates of the Minister over this incident which occurred less than 10 years ago.
Now let us go deeper into this accountability issue that is being determined by someone’s profession, association and relationship with a ruling hierarchy at the time of an occurrence. If Mr. Granger by virtue of his profession, his office, his being in the country at the time, although not at the scene of the tragic episode that occurred some four decades ago in which three Guyanese lost their lives, is being held accountable for that, then how much more tangibly compelling is the accountability of those similarly compromised over happenings in which, perhaps, hundreds of Guyanese were tortured, mutilated and killed less than 10 years ago?
We live in nation governed by laws that unambiguously define murder as the killing of a human by a human being with malice afore thought expressed or implied. We live in a country governed by laws that define criminal conspiracy as an agreement by two or more persons to commit an unlawful act, or to commit a lawful act by unlawful means. We also live in a society with laws that unambiguously state that every citizen in this land is entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence.
The United Nations Articles on human rights and the treatment suspects unambiguously assert that the state is obligated to ensure that due process and equality under the law attend all cases and is accorded to every citizen who might be circumstanced by suspicion of crime.
When gangs of vigilantes carry out a campaign of summarily kidnapping, torturing and murdering people they subjectively associate with crime, and there is no vehement outcry from the State, how do we go about apportioning accountability? Can there be more compelling factors for accountability in an event in which there is sworn Court Testimony that links the killing of a journalist and political activists directly with a member of the current Government. This, if one were to use the logic being applied by Ramracha, would render every member of the current regime accountable for the actions that led to all of those killings.
Mr. Editor the death of any citizen in our country, regardless of the circumstances, should be a concern for everyone. The problem in our country, however, is that too many advance formulations from a position of moral relativity. They exhibit blindness to logic that is frighteningly disconcerting, and present a potpourri of argumentations where they fill vacuums of continuity with anecdotal leaps of fantasy. How come all of the other officials who were in the same profession of David Granger are not considered accountable for the issue they are laying at his door?
It is quite obvious that faced with the task of compiling a viable platform of ideas and accomplishments to take before an electorate, a substitution that amount to a synthesis of phantasmagoria and vacuously conceived notions is being trotted out to fill that cognitive deserted waste land.
Robin Williams

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