A beheading and a sense of maturity in our people

Jan 21, 2018 News

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By Leonard Gildarie

This past week was indeed a strange one. One incident shocked the nation into silence while the other should receive a loud, standing round of applause.
The first instance had to do with a video posted on Facebook that the newsroom at Kaieteur News saw. It was being shared and this was no ordinary video.
A young man was seen lying on the ground, gagged, bare-chested and wide-eyed.
The video, two-minutes long, was at the very least one of the most shocking, by the very brutality.
Men in the video were seen cutting off the ears of the young man. There were clinical movements involved; born from experience, I would say.
The young man was then chopped repeatedly across the neck. The machete appeared to be dull. It could have been any other video from an incident of the Middle East. They kept hacking at the neck. I am tough, but I was forced to stop watching.
In this case, however, the comments of the video were chilling. The location is said to be Venezuela. The young man was recognised to be Guyanese. His family is somewhere from the North West area. The story does not end there.
It was difficult to make contact with the family, said to be from Hosororo, Region One.
The police could not immediately confirm an incident happened. As of the time of writing, I have not seen a police statement. However, persons on Facebook were sharing the graphic video and acknowledging knowing him.
A number of them said that he was related to the Romascindo family.
There were whispers of a wake being kept somewhere in Region One.
In fact, the only official confirmation came yesterday from the National Toshaos Council.
Confirming that the young man is Guyanese, the council indicated that it has been following the developments of someone missing in a mining district. He was only heard from when the video surfaced.
The council said that it has attempted to contact the family and that their privacy should be respected at this time.
“The NTC is keen to highlight that there is no justification for such an act, and while the video claims that those are farmers who caught a thief, we were reliably informed that the young man was employed by his murderers and never paid. When he asked for his payment, his employers took to this process to address and deter others from seeking fair compensation for their work.”
The council, in confirming that the beheading took place in neighbouring Venezuela, noted that the difficulties in that country should not be taken lightly nor taken advantage of.
The body said that while it encourages humanitarian help for the troubles of Venezuela, where thousands of our people live, it insists that our hospitality should neither be taken advantage of, nor taken for granted.
The NTC called on the authorities to investigate the incident and improve security at the border.
To say I am deeply troubled by this incident would indeed be an understatement.
I agree with the council. While we disagree with the leadership of Venezuela and their bullying ways, we hold no “beef” with the people of that country.
Thousands of us migrated there when things were hard here. Many Guyanese married Venezuelans and have children born there. When we wanted to trade, the former President, Hugo Chavez, helped established a regional deal, including an oil-for-rice arrangement with Guyana.
It is not time for us to be ungrateful. However, as a people, our pride, our sovereignty, must be protected.
It is a fact that despite our strained relations with Venezuela, significant trade in rice and fuel and other food items is still happening, some of it illegally. The border area has become an informal place, with residents exchanging food for fuel also.
Our soldiers have reportedly been even feeding their counterparts. However, we have to protect this country.
With the current shortage of basic items in Venezuela, its residents will continue to flee.
With our borders being the way they are, unless we control the situation, we could very well lose our hinterland. This administration will do well to pay a close eye to the area. We have to.
We have to find out what happened to that young man and fight to bring the perpetrators to justice. It is what we expect of our authorities.
HEADING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
On Friday, the sugar unions met with the ruling administration, vowing to work with them to find solutions to handle the current situation at GuySuCo.
I like the tone of the talks. It has rightfully shifted from the daily cuss-outs to now sitting and attempting to find the answers.
The Opposition too has signalled a willingness to accommodate privatisation from local businesses.
I have said it before, and will say it again…our biggest challenge remains ourselves.
We will fight on other issues. However, it is impossible to argue that there is nothing to agree with.
In this case, it has to be concluded that the status quo of sugar could not remain. It just was bleeding this country. Decisions – urgent ones at that – had to be made.
The fact that we have retained an expert, Colvin Heath-London, who has a sugar background, to lay the foundations of privatisation and divestment, is quite heartening.
In fact, now that PricewaterhouseCoopers has been retained, there appears to be confidence in the process.
We are heading in the right direction. With a new management and board for GuySuCo soon, there are still possibilities of the reopening of those closed estates within months.
Investors will more than likely want to buy-in faster if we have some time to offer.
I am not saying we give it away, but we cannot close a factory and await investors.
So yes, the unions, Opposition and Government have to be applauded for taking the mature route. It is how civilised people with a deep love for their country behave.
A classical example of how democracy works is the United States.
Despite the fact that one party has control of Congress, the federal government shut down at midnight Friday as senators from both sides of the aisle continued to scramble to reach a deal to fund the government.
This is the first modern government shutdown with Congress and the White House being controlled by the same party, and it comes on the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
There’s nothing wrong with taking a principled stance and voting against your party.

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