Never stop crying until divine justice comes

Apr 19, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

The dreadful news surfaced last week. It was about Levoy Taljit and that he is feared dead. His death should not mean the death this sordid saga of perversity, politics, and power in this country. For as Levoy Taljit lived and died so, too, did Alicia Foster. In this country, we like to speak of, remember, and hail our heroes and martyrs. Both Taljit and Foster were and are deserving of all the heroic esteem that could be given them. Their blood was spilled heinously, and it rests on the heads and hands of more than those who did the actual deeds.
Editor, the blood of Levoy Taljit and Alicia Foster, both cut down and lost in their prime, rests on the heads of those responsible for orchestrating their murders. It stains inerasably their hands, which ondemns them on each occasion that they raise those same hands before the mirror, dare to stretch them before the light. How can they look at them, their children? The truths are there, but never talked about openly, only whispered, as is the way of Guyana increasingly. It was that both Mr. Taljit and Ms. Foster performed their public service jobs in an honest and honorable manner. Those are elements that are lacking in just about every leader in this country, quite a broad cohort of public servants, and so many others in our citizenry.
Taljit was seeing too much, objecting too much, and insisting that the requirements of the job (policies and procedures) be complied with to the letter. It couldn’t have lasted long at the two State Agencies at which he worked; not with crooked bureaucrats as colleagues, not with criminal businesspeople as adversaries. He had to leave both those agencies under pressure, for he angered powerful men, who are accustomed to doing business a certain way. They had and still have powerful political connections, which is why we talk about triggermen only and only now. Look back to the time of Taljit’s disappearance and there is the answer for which protective politicians, which protecting political leaders could have made matters go away. The intellectual authors of the cruel and wanton deaths of Taljit and Alicia Foster knew and enjoyed close relations with the political people (or their agents) who could make matters like these be held in eternal abeyance, by being swiftly swept under the carpet. It is the mortuary for the storage of cases made not just cold, but which freeze into deathly stillness.
Whether the matter at hand was taxes or energy products (Taljit), or the environment and what did not, could not, pass principled muster (Foster), they had to go. They had to be made examples of, be cut down in the bloodiest of ways. Other public servants of possibly like outlook on their jobs were given notice. Don’t do it our way, and this is the result. We knew of one killing from day one; today, we live with the death of Taljit made clear last week after nine unending years. Those who knew all along didn’t need any police release of what was long suppressed, and for some inexplicable reason found traction and expression in April 2022. There was nothing new, but the regular old….
The real killers are not some cheap execution(s), but those who are swollen with the commercial successes and prospects of this country. Men who are now intricately involved in the enriching game of national progress, and who are closely linked to those political leaders who can make anything disappear, including any felony, any evil that talks this land. The blood of our young and sparking, our bright and energetic, shed and just for doing what was right. Nothing stays hidden forever. Absolutely nothing!
I wonder what those political leaders think when they are reminded of this kind of news that they wish were compressed, never made to see the bright, revealing dawn. I ask myself also, what our leaders who were at the helm then now see when they look in the mirror, if not the faces of these two young Guyanese killed by their friends, their insiders, their supporters from that ever widening criminal sector.
I look around and watch closely. We have public servants today, but what we don’t have is backbone, integrity, the care for the duty (because they just don’t have it) to stand for anything that is noble and indubitably honorable to do justice by the defeated people of this country. I look similarly carefully at the leaders around, and all I see is their widespread deviousness, for I hear their lies, and I recognize the friends and loyalists they protect. The bodies are there, and there are the murderous stories of Levoy Taljit and Alicia Foster. Their blood stains the red that our political leaders wear so proudly, so perversely. Guyana weeps for your stricken son and fallen daughter. Guyanese weep for yourselves. Cry, justice, cry! Never stop crying until divine justice comes.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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