Dear Editor,
The death of young Aleena Preetam has once again ignited a wave of outrage across Guyana — a visceral, if fleeting, moral convulsion from a society too accustomed to its own failures. Overnight, public figures, institutions, and social media voices have rushed to condemn what they now rediscover as a national disease: the sexual exploitation of minors by men of influence. Yet, this sudden spiral of indignation reeks of duplicity.
For years, the country has lived with a quiet complicity—one fed by political calculation, public apathy, and judicial inertia. When past cases demanded moral courage, the nation watched them die slow deaths, smothered by the silence of those in power and the weariness of those who resisted. Today’s outrage is, therefore, less a rebirth of conscience than a performance of relevance, as civil society stirs only when the tragedy is too fresh to ignore.
Consider, for instance, the disgraceful episode involving Nigel Dharamlall, the former government minister who faced allegations of sexual misconduct with a 16-year-old girl in 2023. Despite the public outcry, justice was quietly deferred and ultimately denied. The victim’s retraction — reportedly secured through inducements — ended the investigation, and the Director of Public Prosecutions dropped the charges. Dharamlall’s “voluntary resignation” was brief; his return to the corridors of power now serves as a calculated insult, a symbolic gesture from the President himself—a middle finger, crudely raised against public decency and moral accountability. Equally disturbing is the trajectory of Vikash Ramkisson, another government figure accused of grooming an underage girl who later took her own life as the scandal broke. His ascension to ministerial office, unimpeded by shame or scrutiny, signals a normalization of such predation within governance itself. The message is clear: within this political fraternity, the stain of sexual abuse can be washed clean by proximity to power.
These are not isolated moral failures; they are systemic atrocities. Their recurrence exposes a governance culture built on impunity, secrecy, and the strategic burial of shame. Each unanswered abuse corrodes public trust, teaching both victims and bystanders that justice is conditional and compassion selective.
If Aleena’s death has reignited national outrage, then let it also reawaken national memory. Let Guyana refuse to forget what it was made to overlook — the deferred justice, the silenced victims, the predators reinstalled as leaders. Civil society’s moral compass cannot swing only toward the latest tragedy; it must hold steady against the enduring rot that has allowed such tragedies to multiply.
To “keep the flame” alive is not simply to mourn Aleena Preetam — it is to demand reckoning for every silenced voice before hers. Anything less is complicity masquerading as conscience.