Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water

Jul 25, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

My wife said to me Saturday night, “Where is that music coming from?” I told her a private night spot in the Giftland Mall compound. Since the July prison escape, there was a manifest decline in nighttime activities. You couldn’t miss the absence of traffic where I live, just one-minute drive from my home to Giftland Mall.
During the immediate aftermath of the prison break, I did my customary nocturnal walk with my dog at the mall. My wife asked me to discontinue it. The car park was conspicuously slack. About five nights ago, while walking my dog in the same site, I noticed the normal, huge build-up of parked vehicles. There is a night spot as you enter the Giftland compound. It has a semi-alfresco appearance. Patrons were swinging. I think that was where the music was coming from that my wife enquired about.
As the days wore on, I think people were getting back into their routine. The prison escape from Lusignan will definitely put a damper on the return to nighttime activities of citizens, as what happened in the first week of the Camp Street inferno. I am sure as I look out my window tonight I will see the trickle on the Railway Embankment. And I know my wife will stop me from walking the dog tonight. As I write, there is no advisory from the embassies indicating that their citizens should take caution or warning those from their countries about travelling to Guyana.
At the moment, there is a big diaspora conference sponsored by UG, in which a sizeable number of overseas-based Guyanese and also foreigners are in the country attending. It is too early to say what will be their attitude to their stay. The Government itself has advised citizens to be watchful. It follows that if locals should be careful, then foreigners may become pessimistic and want to leave. I hope not.
How could 13 dangerous inmates have dug a hole under a fence and escaped? It just baffles the imagination. At the time of writing, that is the explanation making the rounds. It may not have been the mode of getaway but if it is, then this government is in trouble. A number of factors have to come into play. First, the violent inmates were the ones that instigated the riot in 2016. It meant that from thereon, those kinds of prisoners needed to be given extra surveillance.
Surely, a man in the Camp Street prison jailed for nine months for a pick-pocket offence isn’t going to riot to escape. Such low profile prisoners normally would wait for their short stint to end. Escape plans are most times hatched by criminals with a very long stay.
The July 2017 prison mayhem was instigated by people incarcerated for horrible crimes. Yet there are reports that they mingled with low profile prisoners and could have been seen in the court yard “liming.” Thus it appeared that the relevant authorities did not learn the lessons of the 2016 prison fire in which seventeen died.
We come now to Lusignan. The prisoners that escaped yesterday are deemed dangerous. Were they given extra watch in their makeshift accommodation at Lusignan? The answer to that has to be yes. If no, then we are surely on a journey to nihilism, as I am wont to write about.
Let us return to the digging. If that is the method they used in the uncivilized hours of Monday morning, then it had to take hours to make that aperture large enough for a human to pass through. What instruments did they use? Wasn’t noise made during the operation? Where were the security personnel during those hours? Wasn’t there supposed to be twenty-four hour guard service ringing the external perimeter of the makeshift fence?
I guess these answers will have to wait for another inquiry. If there is going to be another Commission of Inquiry into the July inferno at Camp Street, the authorities can save money by subsuming the investigation of this latest prison madness under the Camp Street inquiry. I guess in that way they save money.
What happens in the coming weeks and months is anyone’s guess if those prisoners from Camp Street and Lusignan are not captured. But for sure until that happens, this nation will be an unhappy one. My thoughts will be with our folks who live in isolated spots in the interior and the rural areas. This country’s people deserve happiness they never had long before and long after Independence.

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