Cold-blooded murder, ‘bad business’
Frankly Speaking...
By A.A Fenty
Stabroek News
November 8, 2002
I’ll do my best, after today’s offering, to force myself to leave the straight crime-wave theme to all the “others” for a few columns.
But as I see, with my mind’s eye, the looks of wonderment and grief in the eyes of the murdered victim’s tiny tots, and hearing from a most reliable (eyewitness) second-hand source what they did to the live, then dead body of murdered kidnap-victim Camaldeo Ganesh, I am moved to give my perspectives on two aspects of the organised destabilising phenomenon we relatively-innocent Guyanese are now experiencing.
Consider this: how would you feel if you lived in a community where a gang of individuals, who took pleasure in mutilating the body of a young man who did them nothing, dwell or live? Put another way, would you feel comfortable living in a community in which there are torturers and kidnap specialists - a “special” breed of criminals?
Well, some of you reading this might just be living in some proximity to the haunts of those who kidnapped two East Coast Indo-Guyanese residents, and who mercilessly brutalised them before shooting those kidnap victims who were not known for immense wealth or shady dealings. Reportedly, Uncle Jinga Motilall’s teenaged captors teased and taunted his family before and after killing the grandfather in cold blood. What type of beast has evolved upon us? I end this by asking two simple questions:
Are you living amongst kidnappers who would torture, mutilate, then kill? In this environment of fear wouldn’t Jinga Motilall’s employees who witnessed his kidnap in broad daylight, assist the police aggressively?
Poor uninformed me. It was only during the past four months, I’d say, that I really came to understand the street-wise expression “Bad Business”. This “business” I’m advised, has to do with the practice whereby operatives involved in illegal, corrupt and yes, deadly transactions do not honour their obligations after their operation is concluded. One individual or group decides not to stick to earlier agreements made when the deal was initiated.
For example, the agreed portion of takings might not be paid over; part of the loot, other proceeds or undertaking - not always necessarily actual money - would be held back; an officer or employee might not have honoured his undertaking given to a crook whose payments or takings he had enjoyed earlier; a “shipment”, a visa or a property might have been held back. And since these operatives regard themselves as (big) businessmen, it’s bad business when one individual or faction didn’t or doesn’t honour their part of the deal. So, however earlier business was transacted and not “honoured” those who felt wronged or cheated exact their “payments” in fatal manner, most times.
So it’s against that explanation that those “in the know” attribute many recent and current killings to the consequences of bad-business. When a policeman is killed - bad business; when someone is kidnapped - bad business; when unexplained drive-by shootings - bad business; when seemingly innocent, “loving” sons are killed - whether they were technicians, taxi drivers, airport staff, auto dealers, charitable business people - bad business!
How much of it is accurate? What must I believe? Even the truly innocent could be painted with the brush of “bad business” in this open season of criminal anarchy. The truth lurks in the crevices. Or it stares the knowledgeable - and the naive - in the face. Whatever you do, stay out of this bad-business business.
Two responses...
As I rarely do this, allow me to indulge myself today. Most briefly. I respond to Dr. M. Garnet James’ letter of this past Tuesday regarding my major item last Friday. Dear doctor, I find it interesting - or largely disappointing - that I merely “prompt” your early Friday morning laughs. Though I claim no “intellectual” heights, I don’t fully believe you.
The gist of your correspondence suggests that you unearth truth - or at least some experienced wisdom (?) underneath the humour.
And if you are the Garnet James who was associated with economic teachings, management and advisories to the Burnham administrations of yore, I, of course, could find nothing funny in your efforts or the consequences therefore. If you’re not that personage keep on reading still.
Even my levity is good for wounded - even guilty - souls. I mean, after all, amidst all the international evils “beyond our control”, of the seventies and eighties, look where the able and the intelligentsia, now even more brilliant in hindsight, had gotten us by 1992.
Believe it or not, I was actually upset, for a few seconds, at the remark of another correspondent last Friday.
He or she had written in his SN letter that: “... or better yet put it under A.A. Fenty’s column”. He was referring to alleged “improper journalism” attributed to my editor for the treatment of a story about the (police) shooting of a “Budhai” Goodman on the East Coast.
Why should this “Name-and-address supplied” anonymous letter-writer consider that my space should accommodate “wild allegations against a policeman”?
Quickly, I remonstrated with myself for being rankled.
Apart from thinking get there behind me Satan, at my age and stage I should just roll with those uninformed punches.
But I wonder: why do they bother to read me. Why not pretend they don’t? Like dozens of others?
So long?
1) What!? My Sidney King of the past. My 77-year old Buxton Sage would even think of acquiring permission to be a resident Alien in another state?
I suspect it was written lightly (in SN Thursday Oct 31, 02). Do not allow them and their Taliban to do that to you, Elder Kwayana.
2) Why did the President go on that television show? (Next week for Mr Alan Munroe and Civics’ mistakes).
3) Welcome home champs! See you on the Guyana Cook-Up show sometime soon.
‘Til next week.
