A very disturbing security situation

Jan 09, 2014 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
The American Mafia has a saying –”friends and family often prove more loyal than competent”. This saying quickly came to mind when I read a letter to the editor over the Christmas holidays which chronicled an event that took place at the wedding ceremony of cricketer Ramnaresh Sarwan.
According to the letter writer who was also a guest at the event, behaviour unbefitting of a statesman was displayed by former president Bharrat Jagdeo, which insulted the integrity of President Donald Ramotar, by not according him the customary deferential esteem reserved for Heads of State upon their arrival at events.
This conduct, according to the writer, did not only cause the President gross embarrassment, but compromised the security of the president to the extent that he appeared timid and traumatized thereafter.
The critical question that begs an answer is exactly how did the president’s advance party prepare the groundwork for his visit? Agreed or not! It is the author’s view that loopholes in that process led to the indignity visited upon the president.
Practices developed among nations in the course of their contacts with one another define the essence of protocol. Protocol is the combination of good manners and common sense, which allows effective communications between heads of state, their representatives and nation.
The aim of close protection is to proactively and reactively protect the President against direct personal risks, such as Mortus Discriminatus – assassination, kidnapping and assault; and indirect personal risks, such as threats, intimidation and crimen injuria. The doctrine crimen injuria is a concept in South African law and has to do specifically with the protection of one’s integrity.
In general, close protection operatives (CPOs) do not work by rote or in a haphazard manner, but usually take several factors into consideration, which forms the basis of their protection initiates.
When a proper threat assessment is carried out, one finds that the greatest degree of threat to a principal revolves around the vehicle; with the next highest risk to the potentate being the venue, which should be protected from all possible threats.
Conversely, over many years past, the responsibility for protecting the President of Guyana has been delegated to mostly friends of the government. A report authored by L. Jacobs and G. Schneider highlights the danger of this practice. Following are excerpts of that report:
There seem to be four key points relating to the provision of Close Protection Services in developing countries (non-regulated) which were identified and outlined in a report authored by L. Jacobs and G. Schneider. This report emanated from experience gained after providing close protection training at presidential level in Equatorial Guinea between November and December of 2002. (Schneider 2005).
The points mentioned in this report are as follows:
• The tendency to appoint untrained family members as CPOs as opposed to selecting and training the best possible candidates for the job.
• The belief that the more loyal the persons are around a Principal the better protected and therefore safer the Principal is.
• The focus on excessively tight information security and secrecy during all operations and movements (travelling) of the Principal, to the point where the CPO team is uninformed, which negates effective planning and development of close protection contingencies.
• The belief that training, retraining and minimum actual competencies; which are vital for effective operation is on the whole ignored and security is handled in an ad hoc, unplanned and therefore unprofessional manner (Jacobs & Schneider, 2002: 2).
When the above-mentioned points are examined, it becomes clear that Guyana holds much in common with the above case study, which when viewed in security and safety terms, is a very disturbing situation.
Clairmont Featherstone

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