From Calabria with love

Mar 25, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – For the longest while, when I heard the word Mafia, the thought was of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather. Before that blockbuster, there was the Boston and Irish Mafia in the John F. Kennedy White House. Then came the Jewish Mafia and the Red (Russian) Mafia. I made my way back to dear old Guyana, and there it was the PPP Mafia.

It belongs in that fold, could have laid claim to being a regional founder member since the arrival and ascendancy of one sinister and notorious political figure. Guyanese have been trying to cope with that tough reality.

It is a love-hate relationship, part Robin Hood, and all the thick darkness that goes on in gangster hoods. Politicians make the best of hoodlums. After all they can commandeer the best camouflage of all: the power of the state, the power to bend people, policies, and practices to suit their criminal will.
This is the melting pot that is Guyana. Political kingpins are at the criminal helm, but their mugs and bios do not appear on Wanted posters, or Rogues galleries. The possession of power sees to layers and layers of such protective gloss.

As if this crushing criminal melting pot still leaves room for more criminal elements, there is now announced the arrival of ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria, Italy well embedded in Guyana. Guyana is in for it. The dirty pages of history remind all Guyanese about how much sunny, sleepy, and tricky Guyana has become a magnet for the foreign criminally minded, the criminal veteran, and the criminal in waiting. Looking backwards, there was the American, Jim Jones, who took his crimes all the way into the deep interior, where they exploded into world headlines, and left Guyana with a bad name.

Instead of the Kaieteur Falls, Guyana became most readily identified with Jim Jones. There was another notorious American, a man wanted by the FBI, who not only took up residence here, but was given free rein to run amok. He had the inspiring name of Rabbi Washington: a title revered by Jews; a Founding Father’s name etched in American immortality. A mafia like government at the time turned him loose on Guyanese found to be offensive. The times change but the governments stay the same. I would argue that they get worse.

Not long after, there was a ‘Wanted’ Trinidadian by the name of Malik, who decided that Guyana was the best place for a criminal sleeper. Then, there have been other overseas based persons who came here and wreaked havoc. They had the distinction of being Guyanese born.

It seems that the crooked and the criminal from near and far study their options and conclude that Guyana is their best prospect for a safe harbour. Hence, all the way from Calabria, the ‘Ndrangheta’ came seeking and finding refuge in Guyana. Having a better idea than most about how this country works (and the criminal mindset of people with palpable power), I put this on the table for the consideration of all Guyana: was it a case of this man finding covert refuge all on his own, or did he benefit from being secretly offered a quiet kind of asylum?

The Mafia, either from Mulberry Street, New York City or Sicily or Calabria (or Vatican City), has a ton of money. It can buy anything and anyone to make matters go its way. Money is the coin of this realm, the all-purpose and all-powerful asset that makes from ranking politicians to top public servants dance to its command.

A passport arranged, a place to lie low, a connection to the people that move things and products and procedures around, and then out of this country. It boggles the mind, at least it does my limited one, that a man from ‘Ndrangheta’ could smartly and serenely take as an address, one on Duke Street, Kingston of all places.

Look what and who are there. It is brazenness taken to a fearsome level. I am thinking that this fella from the ‘Ndrangheta’ could have just as well been a terrorist cell from places a little farther along from Italy.

How do situations like these take a firm footing in this country is beyond me. If and when people like me sneeze around here, agents of the PPP Government jump out of their skin and get ready for war. Yet, a man wanted by international law enforcement entities, could exist so smoothly, so freely, and so happily in this land.

This was more than operating in plain sight. It was of someone probably being given the opening and space required to perform as he pleases. On the other hand, and by the regular political standards of today, Guyanese who do not hide who they are and what they stand for are made into examples: vilified, disqualified, and crucified.

Real criminals representing clear and constant danger are coddled or given a greenlight to function as they please. Meanwhile conscientious citizens, whose only crime is civil disagreement and disobedience, are hung in effigy by the PPP Government, its big crabs, and its lynch mobs. It should not surprise any Guyanese anymore as to why foreign criminal operators look at Guyana as being so inviting a resting place. They recognize likeminded plotters in the national government.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, mafia

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