We have dumped what once worked

The year started badly with a rash of murders. By the time the dust settled, it turned out that the killers of at least three people were teenagers who had become drug addicts. When the police made the first arrest, I was stunned at the age and the callous nature of the killer.
He had gone to the home for money, obviously to feed his habit, in the company of two others, one of them a 24-year-old. The police turned up at his home to catch him washing the blood from his body, while his clothes were soaked in a bucket.
The third of the lot kept running until he was spotted on a mudflat. It took the valiant efforts of police recruits, with the support of their more senior colleagues, to catch him. I remarked at the fact that he was taken alive because in days gone by, when Bharrat Jagdeo was president, such wanted persons were shot out of hand. They never lived to stand trial.
My shock deepened when they appeared in court on Friday. There were the media people trying to capture the images and there were the young criminals showing them the finger. There was no remorse, no regret at snuffing out the lives of three ordinary people who simply wanted to live.
We don’t hang people anymore, so these young men would spend a part of their lives behind bars and then be released onto the streets again. By then they would have matured and perhaps become even more seasoned. They would have been exposed to hardened criminals; they would be supplied with drugs in prison, and some of them would enjoy the luxury of cell phones.
I asked Clement Rohee, the former Home Affairs Minister, about the reaction of the residents after they found out who the killers were. His answer was that the people were angry at the government and the current Public Security Minister, Khemraj Ramjattan. He said that they were also angry at the police.
Needless to say, I found this to be hogwash, because people tend to vent their spleen on the criminals and their relatives. I do know that many people still have the mindset that killers are predominantly people of African ancestry who live in the city. I know that Rohee and certain members of his party help to perpetuate that image in the minds of their supporters.
They said as much during the elections campaign, causing the people to believe that if they did not vote for the People’s Progressive Party, then the government would release these black criminals on them. And I hasten to add that in the wake of the killings, there was the belief that such was indeed the case.
Since then, there have been calls for a return of the death penalty, which remains on the statutes but which is not invoked. The sociologists and the psychiatrists would talk about dysfunctional families being the cause. They would not talk about the failed education system and the failure of the social organisations to make an impact on young lives.
This is a widespread problem. There was a time when inspectors visited the schools to ascertain that teachers performed as they should. There was also a time when priests, pastors, moulvis and pandits would visit the homes of people, on request, because the parent had some problem dealing with an errant child.
These are things of the past, but I hasten to add that there was never so much crime when those things were done. People had values; older people were quick to scold young children. These days it is a case of people insisting that they mind their own business.
Take the case of the missing British teenager whose body turned up in a shallow grave. Except for the mother of a woman who shares a relationship with the killers, everyone is a young person. How did the society get like this?
In a matter that is before the court, again a group of young people had no compunction about entering the home of a member of judicial system and brutalizing that person. Another young man entered the home of a former crime chief and terrorized the man and his family. As fate would have it, when the identity of the victim became known, that young man’s mother handed him over to the police.
Crime apart, we now have a rash of suicides. I always say that if I am suicidal then I can take my life at any time.  I don’t have to do so today; I can wait for tomorrow which promises to be better. But this seems not to be the case of the people who are in a mad rush to make the headlines as dead people.
There have been no fewer than a dozen suicides already for the year. There was one just Saturday morning. Guyana has already earned the sobriquet of being the suicide capital of the world. We tend to become known for all the wrong reasons.
Alcohol has fuelled many of the suicides but then again, there are those fuelled by people who have no skill at problem solving. How can I begin to explain the case of the 14-year-old girl who joins her 20-year-old partner on a table with a rope around the necks of both of them, then agreeing to kick the table aside?
We talk about counseling centres, but more than this is needed. For one, we need to talk more to each other. There was a time when the oral tradition kept many people sane. People simply poured their guts out to others. These days people say that when they tell their story, the people to whom they speak turn around and use the information to cuss them out.
I say, we are each other’s keepers; we need to talk more with our neighbours. We need to pay attention to the young people around us, because when all is said and done, Guyana is all we have and without good people the country is nothing.