Guyana surely needs a new security culture

Aug 19, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
During September 2004, I was part of the Guyana Small Business Association’s delegation to the Regional Conference for Small and Medium Size Businesses, held at the Sherbourne Convention Center in Bridgetown, Barbados.
While there, I told delegates from twenty countries that Guyanese will become the first CARICOM nationals to be cited for acts of terrorist delinquency, and that when this happens, all those prosecuted will be Muslims of African descent.
Mr. Patrick Zephyr, a devout Muslim, then president of GSBA and head of delegation, presented a scholarly rebuttal, which was well received. He commenced his argumentation with the word impossible!
None the less, Guyana now shares along with Trinidad, the dubious title of being the first CARICOM states to be so cited.
Like Patrick Zephyr, I remembered the impression on the face of Minister of Home Affairs Mr. Clement Rohee, when I told him, while being present at a public forum held at his ministry ,that the Crime Stoppers Programme in which he had placed great confidence, could not work here in its current constituted format.
If I may paraphrase a recent U.N report, A thorough assessment of the country’s context should be a precursor to any crime prevention and criminal justice reform, according to the United Nations Office On Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2010-2011 report. Thus, my position on the Crime Stoppers Project was influenced by concerns similar to those outlined in the U.N report.
While on a visit to the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies (Barbados) in 2009, a senior official of the Barbados prison service, who was enlisted in a security programme, and had read my comments in a newspaper back in 2004, asked me how I was able to accurately determine that these events would indeed occur in Guyana ?
I told him that while he made it sounded a little like witch craft, one could determine the outcome of certain events in Guyana ,with some degree of accuracy due to the presence of certain entrenched cultural attitudes and stylized behaviours.
As an example, readers would recall shortly after the Guyana Police Force turned up the ante on Roger Khan, he had his representatives publish whole page advertisements in local daily news papers.
A careful examination of those news papers provided details not only of Khans psychological profile at the
time, but also of his geographical whereabouts, and impending capture.
I recalled sitting with three secondary school teachers who were doing an analysis of Khan’s writings just for the fun of it. One a geography teacher, opined that he (Khan) was already out of the country. The English teacher felt he was psychologically rattled and based upon that information, the third teacher concluded that his days were over, Khan was captured several days after.
Sometime after Khan’s capture I received an invitation from Surinamese police officials to provide a professional opinion on the reintroduction of police dogs in Metropolitan Paramaribo. The meeting was held a Saturday morning in central Paramaribo. From the very start, one could sense the superior work ethics of the average Surinamese public servant. There were commanders, police inspectors and other subordinate officers who were allowed to make valid contributions. A police vehicle that was from another district was stopped and the officers asked for their opinions. One thing seemed clear – that the Surinamese police was exhibiting zero tolerance for organized crime. A military officer with whom I spoke later told me to send the report anywhere in Suriname and he will get, he said “give it to any Surinamese and it will get to me”.
Guyana’s entrenched poor security culture was reported by Enrico Woolford on Capitol News on the evening of Wednesday August 3, when he reported on the lack of concern for public safety by returning Guyanese passengers on a flight which arrived merely hours after the Caribbean airline crashed.
In any jurisdiction where the population exhibits a consistently high degree of flippancy as is the case in Guyana, a poor security culture naturally follows.’ Flippancy’ is characterized or marked by a lack of seriousness, especially in respect to matters of grave or seriousness importance.
Today, the governments and security fraternities of most developed countries are now cognizant of Guyana’s new security reality, and do not trifle with the analysis of local security practitioners, which is still the unfortunate practice at home. Guyana surely needs a new security culture.
Clairmont Featherstone

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Guyana surely needs a new security culture

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