…the coalition’s Golden Fleece

I ENTERED NIGEL’S Supermarket last two Tuesdays ago and a supervisor broke the sad news to me that a youngster working with that business was shot the previous night and had lost a lung. He was shot for an imitation gold chain he was wearing.I have fought extra-judicial killings by the police because it’s illegal and those police [the Target Squad and the Quick reaction Group] had become the enforcers of criminal businessmen enriched by the drug trade, illegal arms trade, backtracking and money laundering.
The last administration lacked courage and vision to do the right thing, after dividing the country along racial lines to maintain their political relevance. But due to their failure to govern with prudence, there are now new laws of engagement; this is not the 70s or 80s we have in 2015. The nation has passed through the most violent and debased period of national turmoil, in comparison to none before, during the Jagdeo /Roger Khan experience which had reversed every salient human value on argued principles that held this country together, that once empowered us to question our systems from the days following the hoisting of the Golden Arrowhead to explore and debate motives, to render respect rather than blind obedience, at least in the Guyanese environment I grew up in.
Let me elaborate the context of how the dictates of retrogressed social laws work: the son of a young businessman was badly assaulted and gun-butted on the premises of his father’s business place for ‘back talking’ to a drug boss’s lackey, the father, a licensed firearm holder, came into the vicinity when the lackey was driving off, so he followed him to a popular shop. Recognising that the lackey was armed, he drew his weapon and advanced to the lackey; the confrontation followed with the realisation that to assault this lackey and leave, would lead to retaliation, so he shot and killed him.
A generation has grown up witnessing traumatic deviations like Roger Khan in the open, firing an automatic assault rifle into a certain establishment while the police in the next street remained sedentary. Our nation was criminalised, and so were wide sections of the public workforce, which includes the joint services. This happened because politics without character prevailed. We have come to exalt a 10/ 20 percent who excel or pass at CXC and CAPE as a camouflage and ignore a wider sphere that were partially semi-educated. To reverse this impact of retrogression, the emphasis must be on the current school-age generation, but must skilfully accommodate the young adults who are the direct product-spectators of the ‘drive-by shooting, death squad era’ most of them are poor, illiterate and unskilled except for an overflow of attitude, and street suave that conceal their true impediments and fears. The systems for the extraction of talents do not now exist in our correctional institutions, and it has barely begun to emerge in our schools, with little preparation for accommodation in the wider society, which would also mean a new thinking process in the public service’s higher echelons, to conceptualise and deal vibrantly with ideas and products.
That kind of Young Offender facility that would be able to extract latent talents and skills, yes, such a facility will cost money, but not as much as GuySuCo continues to swallow. It must be patterned as both prison and training centre in an area where adjoining public works can utilise manpower; this would be an out-of-Demerara location. The job market in Guyana has shrunk continuously over the last 25 years, with no replacement for the jobs lost, too much politics less initiative. We have got to go back to creating the new and making familiar things better, some examples have to be created, this means someone has to listen, understand and be open to exploring new frontiers.
Two days ago my colleague from the lions came to pick me up to visit a school where younger children would be participating in an art competition advocating ‘PEACE.’ I felt depressed on my way there, remembering my experience some years ago at another school in that same D’Urban Backlands area; that primary school then, did not have an Art teacher. The depression comes with coming to terms with one’s own helplessness; eager young faces have that effect. Neither did this school, but the willing expression on their faces is the same.
I know the Minister of Education before his current designation and I don’t envy him, the task before him is tremendous. To salvage minds neglected and abandoned will require new landmarks on a dismal landscape. Music, art and drama incorporated into the school consciousness will translate into the social environment and can be the filler for talents without a medium of creative intellectual expression. The authorities at the prisons can testify to the talents they harnessed some decades ago and not so long ago when they experimented with the arts and the TV stations filmed their vaudevilles. These were talents that could find no meaningful, sustainable engagement before or when released. The facts are there, the ‘Will’ to coerce change is needed, and necessary.