Return of executions

Aug 26, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Our streets are becoming extremely dangerous again. To be near to or actually observe a crime being committed, could be the equivalent of a death sentence. Men are being mowed down with automatic gunfire in the most brazen of ways, and with those responsible operating with unchecked impunity. This is the stark, frightening reality of Guyana today, which is best exemplified when criminal executions return and take hold again, while instilling growing alarm of worse to come.
For a few short years under the coalition government, criminal violence recorded some ease, with street-level executions taking a back seat. Similarly, and to a noticeable degree, major drug shipments originating from here occurred with less frequency, and also became a back burner concern. In fact, things in the big criminal underworld got so tight that even coalition supporters muttered weak protestations about ‘the government should not be everywhere and locking out everyone and seeing everything’ that made for a lot of fast and easy money. Most of those feeling the heat and doing the private, unofficial complaining were the Guyanese who had a stake in the criminal prosperity that had flourished prior to 2015, and of which two of the criminal byproducts were conspicuous consumption and street executions.
Mysterious and heavily armed men were killing off rivals, settling scores, and engaging as readily available guns-for-hire in what was a thriving trade and time for business. All those men and all that kind of business dipped to manageable levels during the coalition government’s watch. Make no mistake, there was crime, and there were enormous corruptions in then government circles, among its own cabals. But high-profile criminal episodes took a sort of partial holiday, which the record confirms. As if to furnish further proofs, there were very few, if any, of the high-profile local or overseas drug busts and still higher profile gun blasts of prior times that wiped out both men and menaces to business.
On the other hand, events in the past year have reintroduced what was a worrying reality for Guyanese, and now places it front and centre before the nation’s attention. This is so, and regardless of whether the interest or care of ordinary citizens exists. They had better be, since they (all of us) are the ones who have to be out on the road without bulletproof protections and armed bodyguards. Citizens are the ones who are vulnerable and have to take evasive action on streets, or cower in their unguarded and mostly vulnerable homes. This is, and they are, part of what is the so-called collateral damage that regular Guyanese have to deal with and bear. While powerful political leaders would wish this away or pooh-pooh away, some things cannot be denied or made to go away, so serious are they.
For they are here and growing in strength. There was the recent resurgence of massive Guyanese-in-origin drug busts by foreign law enforcement. There was the Main Street machine gun execution near a popular nightspot, which remains unsolved, and the trail of which grows colder by the day. What is chilling is that that particular execution took place in the vicinity of the residence of Guyana’s head of state. One would reasonably think that such a brazen abomination, where the physical welfare of Guyana’s first family is threatened, no matter how indirectly or peripherally, would result in the swiftest of apprehensions of all involved. Meaning from planners and transporters and executioners, and extending all the way up to the intellectual and financial sponsors. But, as all Guyanese know, there is nothing colder in Guyana today than that clinical Main Street execution, and nothing more under wraps, where even the Guyana Police Force stand insecure and inhibited. This is one story that no amount of public relations plaster can quickly conceal or slickly spinoff.
The second confirmation of the return of executions is that of a Brazilian in the heart of downtown Georgetown. We have been here before, with law enforcement hands selectively tied before, and with powerful perpetrators given a free passage by political powers. Guyanese must brace themselves, for this is shaping up most ominously to be the way of the future, which is right now, right here.

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