…or not to SWAT
The opposition’s opposition to Rohee knows no bounds. That’s the only “reason” we can find for its rejection of the proposal for the Guyana Police Force finally constituting a Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) squad. We know it’s irrational…but then again, the opposition parties haven’t exactly distinguished themselves in the rationality sweepstakes, have they? Even Henry Jeffrey, who’s hoping to join them in their “Big Tent”, has had to hold his head in despair.
But maybe “likes” and “dislikes” are inherently irrational and APNU/AFC just don’t like Rohee. We know Desmond Hoyte also saw red whenever Rohee’s name was mentioned. Is it a “class” thing, since Rohee makes no bones about (and actually flaunts) his origins as a Jagan’s protégé from the “streets”. You’d think they’d respect the fella more…based on the heights he’s scaled.
But que sera, sera…and we return to the SWAT initiative. Back when Guyana was held hostage by gunmen holed up in Buxton – and policemen were being picked off like sitting ducks – there were loud cries for a SWAT team. Some advised the army should be thrown into the fray and a whole unit was dispatched to Buxton. But they decided to turn their guns into ploughshares and ended up “fraternising” with the criminals.
And so we had the British actually working with the police to launch a SWAT unit. At the head of the GPF was Winston Felix, who’d received British training and was their fair-haired boy. And Felix agreed that Guyana needed a SWAT team. Money wasn’t the problem (British funding)…weapons weren’t the problem (British sourcing) …manpower wasn’t the problem (volunteers from the force)…training wasn’t the problem… (British trainers in short pants). But there was no SWAT. What happened?
Felix happened, that’s what. While Felix sucked up to the British and “yes sir’d” them to death, he was PNC to the core. Him, Corbin and GDF Commander Collins were all YSM squaddies. And since the whole strategy for the armed assault on the state was a PNC creation (Hoyte: “The PPP only understands force!”) you couldn’t very well have a SWAT team, that (God forbid!) could actually challenge the criminals, could you?
So the man who commiserated with his PNC contact Basil Williams about the Agricola Massacre (“Ow Bannuh!) quietly decommissioned the SWAT team.
Did we really expect the PNC/APNU to support a new SWAT team, now that they parachuted Felix as their “security” maven in Parliament? Rohee’s the occasion for the war; seizing power by any means necessary is the cause.
…for power
Ariel Sharon, dubbed “the Butcher of Beirut”, after he had Christian militias massacre over 3000 Palestinians in a refugee camp in Lebanon, while his army locked off any escape routes, died after an eight-year coma. There IS a God. For us in Guyana, Sharon exemplifies the clear and present danger when military men assume civilian leadership of the state.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Sharon led a band of “Israeli reprisal teams” that went into the Palestinian villages and randomly killed civilians every time there was an attack on Israel. This experience obviously instilled a very low regard for Palestinian lives and absolutely none for any rules of engagement. Neither in warfare or politics (which to Sharon were ultimately the same, anyway).
So you had him facilitating the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, expelling Bedouins from the Negev Desert – not to mention refusing to accept the idea of Palestine.
And now some will say he was a “peacemaker”?
…a fly
It has been said by folks far wiser than your Eyewitness, that you shouldn’t take a hammer to swat a fly on your friend’s head. So while we agree that folks can’t be encroaching on government’s reserves…we’d advise perhaps some gentler persuasion?
And equal treatment for all transgressors.