IT IS A sad day for any nation when its citizens degenerate to the place of engineering the destruction of facilities which provide vital and critical services to its people.

The recent conflagration at the Ministry of Health reveals a horrifying verity about the nature of the minds of people who live amongst us.

As the Minister pointed out, this assault is not an assault upon the ministry or the government; it is an assault upon the people of Guyana. All Guyanese have been violated in this atrocious act, but more so, the working and poorer class who depend on the services of our health care sector.

The question must be asked: What manner of beings do we have living amongst us, who would put personal, financial, material or political gains ahead of the people of our country? The circumstances surrounding the fire are still being investigated by the police; hence it would be improper to speculate as to the nature and motive of this assault. But what is very clear, and no investigation is needed to determine this, is that the perpetrators of this act cannot, by no stretch of the imagination, be considered humane.

This act is callous, unpatriotic, selfish, and tantamount to terrorism.

In light of the global epidemic and widespread concerns over the H1N1 virus, to have the health ministry incapacitated at this time poses a serious threat to the entire nation of Guyana. For someone, therefore, to deliberately seek to make this ministry inoperable is, in effect, seeking to leave this country vulnerable and exposed to the H1N1 virus and any and every other form of outbreak. Is this not an attempt at genocide? Is this not seeking to wipe out a nation? Surely, anyone even contemplating such actions is not only guilty of treason, but the highest crime against humanity. Hence, I hold the view that no Guyanese is capable of this act. It might be useful for the investigating agency to consider expanding their investigations outside of Guyana. For it may well be that a foreigner, an alien from even outer-space, is responsible for this assault upon our people.

For no Guyanese, conscious of our struggles as a nation, familiar with our history, and who have seen the many hurdles we have surmounted to get to where we are, will even consider such a thing. No patriotic Guyanese, having been raised here, schooled here, lived through the dark days in our political past, would even countenance such a thing.

What we have lost as a nation is not just a building; or some records.

What we have lost is the security of knowing that we are safe amongst our own; that we can go to bed at night knowing that we are safe amongst our own people. We have lost the assurance that our national institutions are safe, not because they are guarded by paid security, but because everyone who holds the label of Guyanese would be the custodian of every piece of property of the State, and the keeper of his brother’s peace.

When we can turn our anger, frustration, or even greed — for we are yet to determine the motive for this crime — against our own people, it indicates a level of irrationality that defies logic.

I pray that we as a nation can regain that spirit of patriotism by which the progress and prosperity of Guyana is secured.

May those amongst us who seek personal gains; who seek to create public unrest by destroying properties of the State, with disregard for the wellbeing of our vulnerable, may they find mercy at the judgment seat of God, at which we all must appear.