WHILE many politicians occupying the opposition benches may understandably wish to emphasise and exaggerate every perceived misstep by the government, all patriotic citizens have a duty to wish for and work towards national success and general development. This is so because if any government fails, the masses invariably suffer; children go to bed hungry; elderly citizens are usually neglected; everyone feels insecure as law enforcement becomes ineffective and the standard of living falls to unacceptable lows as economic arrangements deteriorate.

While the political and business elite may be less affected than the ordinary man or woman, no one is spared the negative effects of government failures because investments dry up and intellectuals leave. As such, all Guyanese, regardless of political allegiance, should, in their own interests, do everything possible to ensure the success of government’s programmes and initiatives.

Guyana is in the process of recovery from the slide into the status of a completely failed state. That recovery began when Guyanese elected a visionary government into office in 2015. A failed state is defined as a political body which has deteriorated to a point where basic living conditions have declined to an unacceptably inhumane standard as a result of the failure of its sovereign government to fulfil fundamentally vital responsibilities and functions.

Political theorist, sociologist, philosopher, economist, author, and jurist Max Weber, wrote that [paraphrasing] a fundamental characteristic of a state is defined as maintaining a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within its borders. When this condition is no longer met (for example, when drug-lords, armed gangs, and criminals overwhelm a country’s legitimate law enforcement apparatus, that state becomes a failed state. This is so, according to the learned scientist, because at that point a state has become ineffective, rendered impotent, and administratively ineffectual. It should be noted that one of Max Weber’s books, “The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism” is taught and explored in almost every university. The man, therefore, was an expert.
A failed state has defining characteristics. The Fund for Peace says that a failed state displays:
1. Loss of control of its territory, or the monopoly of the use of physical force therein.
2. Erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions.
3. Inability to provide public services, such as healthcare and education.
4. Inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community. CARICOM comes to mind.
Each of those expertly studied criteria has been met under the last PPP regime; let us examine them one by one.
1. Loss of government control of communities such as Buxton, Agricola, Linden, and others.
2. No elected authority to make decisions based on law, including constitutional law.
3. No ability to provide basic services to all citizens.
4. Priya Manickchand’s tirade at the home of the Ambassador of the United States to Guyana is but one example of this phenomenon.
Regarding the major issue of the failure of the security of the country, we recall the undeniable facts.

Shaheed Roger Khan, a convicted drug-felon, born on the 13th January 1972, testified under oath in the United States that he worked for the PPP government. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has concluded that his phantom squad killed over 200 persons between 2002 and 2006 with the tacit or explicit approval of the PPP government. It is widely alleged that Roger Khan was closely in contact with Bharrat Jagdeo. Jagdeo had denied that this was true.

There is evidence that a PPP minister may have helped him to acquire electronic equipment. The minister has denied the allegation.

On December 4, 2009, Khan’s lawyer, Robert Simels, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in the US for instructing a hit-man to kill a witness against Roger Khan. Roger Khan was sentenced to a lengthy term of incarceration following a plea-deal in the US. The charges included drug-trafficking, arms trafficking, money laundering, assassinations, witness tampering, murder, and illegal firearm possession.

While the allegations are too numerous to even mention in a single article, as patriotic Guyanese we should be most careful that the conditions that produced a criminal state, and the people that facilitated such a state, must never return.