Present location of Presidential Complex has become useless

Jul 15, 2017 Letters

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Dear Editor,
In recent times, there surfaced what appeared to be a plot to assassinate the President of Guyana. According to some sources, the release of this information was a clever ploy by the government, to justify the expenditures of the ongoing upgrade of the Ministry of the Presidency.
Other sources expressed the view, that the communication of an impending threat is the work of individuals seeking to test the security readiness level of the Presidential Guard Service, to protect the head of state in the event of a more formidable threat.
Except that of President LFS Burnham, previous governments have not been very scientific in their approach to the personal protection function of state officials, so they were unable to effectively communicate security threats to the populace, in a scientifically cogent manner.
I have specifically singled out the government of Forbes Burnham, as the most security conscious of all past governments, because the security preparedness of that era is not to be (compared or confused) with any other; since Guyana at that time, was the only developing country whose presidential security detail, was on a par with what obtained in the developed world. Those old enough to know, will remember that Guyana hosted both the Non-Aligned Foreign Ministers Conference and the Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) in August 1972, without incident.
When one reviews the assassinations of President Indira Gandhi of India, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, Prime Minister Olof Palme of Sweden and the 1990, coup attempt in Trinidad and Tobago; one is tempted to believe that it was hardly likely that Forbes Burnham could have so easily fallen victim to any of those fatal episodes.
The cases cited above, were the end result of fundamentally flawed analyses which resulted in intelligence failures. Protective security of any kind begins with intelligence gathering, which is subject to intelligence analysis – both are part of the critical function of intelligence management, skills for which the Special Branch under Burnham became renowned. The government of Guyana need not agonize to justify the current security upgrade of the Ministry of the Presidency, for a number of reasons, but primacy will suffice.
Guyana is soon to become an oil producing nation with threats to its Sovereignty by a bellicose neighbour. The oil and gas industry is a major component of national critical infrastructure; and as such represents an attractive target for terrorist and organized crime, which have in the past carried out successful attacks on every segment of the oil and gas fuel cycle, among others. It therefore begs the question: if the president is unsafe, how could he provide effective leadership to the nation?
I spent the greater part of my childhood in the vicinity of what is now the Ministry of the Presidency, having grown up four doors west of that installation on Charlotte Street. Four colonial type houses were demolished to pave way for the construction of the existing edifice, so it is not a lot of space. We literally ran the length and breadth of that place as children.
The presidential Complex was a good location in so far that the Head of State was domiciled opposite as was the case with president LFS Burnham. Even then, the tiny space presented a number of security challenges and threats, as there were many incidents in the immediate vicinity since the 1970’s. The southwestern and the south eastern sections of the installation has been the most problematic, given its close proximity to south Georgetown, as postulated by the Routine Activity Theory.
The current location of the Ministry of the Presidency has long outlived its usefulness. Given its structural limitations, the installation does not allow for the manipulation of defensible space (DS) or the implementation of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), as is the case with the Police Headquarters, the Army Headquarters, Parliament Building or the Castillani House.
Which allow for the proper management of an outer, middle and inner perimeter, consistent with security systems designed along Mycenaean principle, that offers maximum protection against for e.g. a powerful bomb being detonated on either Vlissengen Road or Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, and having the desired maximum effect.
Since the Mycenaean approach, which is among the cheapest systems to institute cannot be properly applied there; the next best approach is the technological and enhanced human factor approach, which comes at a relatively high cost. In all honesty though, the site has never afforded the president the requisite level of protection and it never will.
So superior was the security thinking of the Burnham era that when the National Guard Service (NGS) was launched in 1982, it was the only security outfit in the world that practiced industry specific security induction (ISSI) that is to say: it was policy that all personnel be trained for a period of one week before they went on site. Mandatory training for all persons working in the private security sector as (now) practiced internationally is based on this principle.
If individuals wanted to carry arms they were required to train for an additional 2 weeks and then go on probation, if they wanted to be dog handlers, they were trained for an additional sixteen weeks. A process of benchmarking and international comparability would have indicated that all except the Germans were using the sixteen weeks time frame, and they should know better, for they were the best dog trainers at that time. In just three years, the NGS canine division became the largest in the developing world; with over sixty adult dogs and puppies, which had replaced police dogs in several theatres of operation.
Women were recruited through a women’s organization to guarantee fair treatment. This practice is to be found only in Sweden which has the second largest female security officer population in the world, after Guyana. However Sweden started that practice in 2002, by which time their female security offices constituted approximately 22% of the workforce.
I think the government’s success in the security sector at that time was also influenced by a policy document on technical and vocational education and training (TVET) which was drafted in the seventies. When I examined the holistic approach to vocational education and development, I found that the strategies outlined, are those being practiced by developed countries today, having been introduced about thirty years ago. When I spoke to Mr. Andy Moore who happens to be one of Guyana’s foremost experts on vocational education, he was able to tell me the exact name of the document and when it was published.
Clairmont Featherstone

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