Promises, broken ones

Aug 09, 2025 Editorial, News

Kaieteur News – The relatives of Keon Fogenay have broken their silence to express their disappointment. President Ali has not kept his promises made to them following the shooting death of their son, their relative.

He was a bystander during community clashes with the Guyana Police Force, and his death was a result of police fire. Family members of the victim are now recalling four months later, how President Ali promised that there will be resolution, that Keon’s untimely death, and the circumstances under which it occurred, will see the light of truth and justice.

Since then, the family, including his grieving mother, have been treated to either a wall of silence or the usual runaround, which is nothing new with developments like these.

There is a routine and consistency to these killings, reckless killings that aren’t much of a mystery. There is a brutal death, a community rises up in anger, and the president makes the fastest time to the home and family of the deceased. The president has his program handy, his script in his head, with ready words dripping from his lips. There is no one more solemn that President Irfaan Ali on these piercing, hurting occasions. He goes into a different zone, and out spills the promises to the listening, hoping family members. He will use the power of his office to remove every stone and obstacle in the way to ensure that justice is delivered, so that the family is comforted. How he arrives, so he goes: in a flash of movements, with a thick group of hangers-on, and then there is the silence that the family is left to deal with, cope with. however they can.

They all know very well that neither rage nor grieving can do anything to bring back a dead relative, a departed son or nephew in the prime of his life. A promise from a president, however, is a platinum moment to be treasured. A presidential promise, once made, instils the hope that it will be kept, and that the justice sought will help to ease the traumas of crippling memory. When the seal of a president is put on a promise, then it cannot be broken, shouldn’t be broken. For then, what would that do to the reputation of the president who made the promise, and the presidency itself?

This is where President Ali finds himself today in the matter of Keon Fogenay’s death. By all accounts, he was not a protestor, or a troublemaker, but a bystander outside of the storm of community and police clashes. Yet he was felled by a police bullet, and four months later, the swift resolution that the president promised looks weaker and more unlikely with every passing day. Being forced to deal with the ordeal of a loved one’s death was only the beginning for Mr. Fogenay’s family. Because having placed their confidence in the president’s promise, they now are forced to deal with a different ordeal. A promise not kept to date, and being further victimized by a series of pushing around and being on the receiving end of a royal runaround.

According to Keon Fogenay’s family, their approaches to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) have led to a dead end. Their reaching out with the intent of engaging the head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Wendell Blanhum, have had them going around in circles. Neither the Office of Professional Responsibility nor that of the DPP nor the CID have had much to share, other than to point them somewhere else. A family member noted that the financial assistance that was promised for Fogenay’s children is still to be seen.

None of this reflects well on President Ali. Most discomfortingly, the president has earned a reputation for been lightning quick to make promises, but glacially slow to make them come to fruition. The murder of the two Henry cousins in Cotton Tree hangs like an unmoving shadow around the president’s head. We believe that the least he could do is show some concern, enough to find the time to get to the bottom of where Keon Fogenay’s death stands and order someone to report to the family.

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broken, Editorial, Keon Fogenay, Promises

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