Dear Editor,
It was my privilege to stand on the High Altar of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Brickdam, and share in a prayer with a live and online audience during a time of national mourning. A prayer and national mourning for the five Guyanese soldiers fallen in flames to eternal repose, and others who were injured, in that helicopter crash. In that prayer, a step not taken before was tried. I prayed for all the national leaders by name at the time, and for the peoples of this nation in an hour of horrific ordeal. With that as backdrop, I am caught in the unfamiliar position of being uncertain as to which is the right way, to deal with the crash report. The circumstances that contributed. The lessons for Guyanese, all of them.
The PPP Government says national security concerns are an issue. Having withheld the report so long, that was anticipated; made for the commonsense conclusion that was inevitable. I could agree with keeping national security concerns away from the public. However, that shouldn’t mean that the entire report should be kept from the public. The public has a right to know. The fallen heroes, after whom a highway has been rightly named, are due that ventilation; their families, too. The surviving injured who now live with probably many traumatic nightmares of those long horrific moments are also entitled to know what (and who, if any) was responsible for an ordeal that left with gruesome deaths, and life’s grimness for survivors.
Locking down, locking away, the entire report on that helicopter crash is sure to spawn its own speculation industry. The mere invocation of national security leads Guyanese to look in one direction only, harbour the worst misgivings, individual and collective dreads. Trinidad and Tobago are more of a neighbour and nothing of a nemesis. The United States is an ally, not an adversary. Brazil is out of the question, any discussion. Suriname is way to the Eastern border, and though it has its own ideas and claims, it was simply too far away to feature. To stretch the margins, collusion maybe; but direct contribution, I would say no.
So, what is left in this roiling national security milieu? By elimination, there’s Venezuela left standing. No Guyanese should need any education on who is Venezuela, and where Venezuela stands relative to its territorial claims that would wrest almost three quarters of Guyana out of this country’s grasp. Hence, when national security concerns serve as a block to full disclosure of the helicopter crash report, all Guyanese eyes reflexively turn in that northwesterly direction. In working to put a damper on the fears of Guyanese, the government may have added to them.
I think that the Ali Government is being protective. The downside of that protection is that Guyanese now feel more unsafe, US security blanket incorporated, for they have no idea of what perils and threats could be lurking not deep in the remote jungles, but right in the middle of Guyana’s biggest population concentration. The Regent Street gas station bombing now takes on a new dimension: a sprawling, lethal menace right under the nose.