The creeping tentacles of fear have clawed its way back

Aug 10, 2015 Letters

Dear Editor,
The fall of the PPP Government brought a sigh of relief from the masses. The Guyanese people not only hoped for a change. They woke from an induced coma; a long, harrowing and nightmarish reality where the invisible chains of racism, suppression, oppression and destitution buried them in the sands of hopelessness.
The decades of crippling fear brought from them a burdened silence; choked emotions relieved only by the gushing of an enormous amount of tears unable to wash away the blood of their sons and daughters that flooded the pavements, gutters and dark backlands of a nation beleaguered by violence; rape, murders, drugs and the intoxication of naked power by the demigods whose iron fists ruled over them.
Those who challenged the status quo were merely a countable few, courageous, committed, fearless and long suffering; men and women who refused to be silenced in the face of persecution and even death. They journeyed laboriously to the point of May 2015, where the bright light of change illuminating the nation’s skyline drove out the darkness of an era and shone on a new one.
And not so long ago I had watched, with tear-filled eyes and an overpowering sense of elation, at men, women and children in their thousands standing on a solid foundation of a long sought after victory.
And their faces converged into one gigantic mask smiling brightly up at the heavens; their bodies gyrating to the rythmns of freedom and change in a single motion, releasing the pains and all the anguish. Bursting the chains of 23 years of captivity.
What has happened now that have caused them to be afraid to open their doors and windows? Overnight, they are besieged by murders and robberies.
And in that short leap to victory, freedom and change. The nation sank into a low where the creeping tentacles of fear have clawed its way back into the psyche of the Guyanese people.
One is tempted to believe that such an upsurge in violence, robberies and murders may have its roots in a more powerful and sinister reality. Dying men in final and desperate death throes gasping for air to breathe again?
While we may justifiably wish to cast blame elsewhere. We must hold accountable those now in the seat of power. The responsibility is now theirs to act. And act they must to bring an abrupt end to this madness of the senseless killings of the very citizens who cried in jubilation for the freedom they are yet to have and the right to life that is daily being snatched away from them.
I am challenging Minister, Khemraj Ramjattan to make a distinctly clear statement about his immediate plans and strategies to deal with the crime spree in Guyana.
There can be no politicking or excuses or even silence at this crucial juncture. No other business of the government must take precedence over the safety of its people and security of the nation.
I would rather fast for a few days than dine in a restaurant where a bullet may be the first thing that I may be forced to digest.
Norman Browne

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