– exposing Jagdeo’s Red herrings  

MEMORY can be faulty. Events of the past slip from the mind. Political beliefs colour recollections. But credible, verifiable statistics are at hand to provide clarity and comparison.

One of the narratives pushed by the PPP and by the urban chatterati class is that crime has gone up under this Coalition Government; that criminals are on the rampage.

Guyana and Guyanese are not unique in this faulty perception. Even in developed countries where crime rates have steadily and significantly dropped over the decades, surveys continue to show that many people think they have actually gone up. The view is that this is partly fuelled by the conservative media with its thinly-veiled racist agenda, promoting fear of immigrants– people of colour.

In Guyana, it is ironic that The Guyana Times, which on its launch, pledged not to highlight crime, has done a complete 180 degrees and now splashes it all over the front page. One can only ask, Why this change in policy? That paper and the Newsroom recently carried stories with the headlines, “Robberies up 22 per cent” but when one looks closer at the police press release that the stories are based on, in fact this 22 per cent is for robberies where no instruments were used, the least serious category.

There was in fact a 3 per cent decrease in robbery under arms where firearms were used; a 20 per cent decrease in robbery under arms where instruments other than firearms were used; a 36 per cent decrease in robbery with aggravation; a 13 per cent decrease in larceny from the person; a 2 per cent decrease in rape; a 9 per cent decrease in burglary; and an 11 per cent decrease in break and enter and larceny; but no “Robberies up 22 per cent”.

Meanwhile, Jagdeo and his PPP have always portrayed themselves as some thin red line standing between their law abiding supporters and the forces of anarchy. After all, he warned his supporters in 2015, “[w]hen they link up with the military and come into your homes and start kicking the doors down, and when they come after you, who is going to be there…?” Even Anil Nandlall fear-mongered at a PPP rally that the “Devil is coming!”
But to get a clearer picture of crime, one needs to look at long-term trends in the statistics provided by the Guyana Police Force. Let’s examine what actually happened under Jagdeo and the PPP’s watch.
First, let’s look at the murder rate for the period from 2001 to present. In 2001, it stood at 79 murders (relatively low). But in 2002, the rate jumped to 140 and then skyrocketed to 206 in 2003. It was indeed a dangerous time, and perhaps many could recall that people did not venture much out of their homes after dark, for fear of encountering criminals.

The murder rate declined slightly thereafter, but still hit peaks of 153 in 2006 (the murder of a sitting minister Satyadeow Sawh); 168 in 2008 (the year of the Bartica, Lusignan and Lindo Creek Massacres); and 155 in 2013. In 2014, the last full year of the PPP, there were 149 murders. Since then, murders have declined to 116 in 2017. That is half the rate of 2003, and substantially lower than any average year under the PPP.

And it is worth mentioning that many of those murders under the PPP were drug related. In comparison, for 2018 to date according to the statistics released by the GPF, 30 of the murders were disorderly, 20 were domestic, 13 were in the course of a robbery, one was an execution, and eight were under unknown circumstances. The overwhelming majority of murders were therefore perpetrated by people close to the victim.  You have close to ten times as much chance of dying in a road accident as a driver, passenger or pedestrian as being murdered in the course of a robbery.
Let us move on to statistics for robbery under arms. In 2001, there were 1605 such reported cases, rising to 1620 in 2002, once again declining thereafter, but still reaching 1448 in 2006, and 1186 in the last year of the PPP’s time in office.  Under the Coalition, the rate dropped to 964 in 2017, and statistics for the year to date stand at 659, indicating that 2018 will show further improvements.

A lot of this decline in crime has to do with better political and police leadership. Contrast that to 2006 when Jagdeo insisted on appointing Henry Greene as Commissioner of Police, even though it had been shown he had ties to the drug trade, and that the US had revoked his visa. A US embassy official at the time noted, “This issue reveals a real stubborn streak in Jagdeo — he is doggedly sticking with Greene, knowing that he is corrupt and incompetent – that doing so strains Guyana’s security situation and its foreign relations, and imperils GPF operational efficiency.”

Moreover, the addition of known drug traffickers into the crime fight created massive contradictions surrounding law and order in this country. It deeply muddled the citizen’s sense of what is right and wrong. And it is why, even up to today, Jagdeo can get away with talking against Guyana enacting copyright laws.

The recent crime improvements stem from increased training and resources, along with the police simply being allowed to be more professional; to do their jobs without political interference from a minister or superior on behalf of a family or friend. Gone are the days when murders went unsolved (possibly because at one point, those doing the killings were blessed from on high). Who can forget a minister sending the order “Kill” down the phone line?

In 2017, of the 116 cases of murder, 88, or 77 per cent were solved. That is high by any country’s standards. Obviously, much more needs to be done, and the establishment of a Police Service Commission is a foundation upon which better policing can occur.

As President David Granger noted in August, “The days of concealing security sector mistakes and misdeeds are over. The Force’s officers will be held accountable for the consequences of their actions, and for the instructions they issue to their subordinates.”

His Excellency said, when he took office, that law and order was a priority, and he entrusted public security to Minister Khemraj Ramjattan. We are now starting to see his careful steps bear fruit. A safer country has already arrived, and an even safer country awaits. And all this without any mention of the piracy epidemic having been wiped out in Guyana’s waters.