The government believes that a lot of work has to be done to get the joint service concept to work, after significant weaknesses were exposed in the joint army-police campaign in Buxton.
"There have been weaknesses identified... significant weaknesses... Had such knowledge been available beforehand, the responsible executive bodies and individuals might not have thrown their weight so totally behind the joint-service operation," Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon told the Disciplined Forces Commission yesterday. In retrospect, he said the outcome was not disastrous although there was no doubt the military could have exercised greater involvement and greater responsibility.
Luncheon, representing the government before the Commission, said this was the lesson that could be learned from the recent joint-service experiences in Buxton, which was turned into a virtual operation base for criminals following the February 2002 jailbreak that sparked an unprecedented wave of crime.
The Commission is investigating the operations of the disciplined forces, including the Guyana Defence Force and the Guyana Police Force and will present its findings and recommendations for the consideration of the National Assembly.
It is chaired by Justice of Appeal Ian Chang and includes former Attorney General Charles Ramson S.C.; former National Security Advisor Brigadier (rdt) David Granger; attorney Anil Nandlall; and Irish human rights activist Maggie Beirne.
Yesterday, at the Supreme Court Law Library, where the commission is hosting public hearings, Luncheon said the government was, with external support, trying to forge unity between the army and the police force to deal with the particular threat of criminal activities, in the wake of the Buxton experience.
He said during the early years after the current government was elected to office, the joint service concept was "a living one" and it was the belief that it was capable of living up to the expectations, particularly in the realm of joint operations and co-ordination.
Ultimately, he said an unusual amount of faith was placed in the agencies and their collaboration. He considered that experience had proven that there were times which called for innovation, but in this case the government sought to rely on an approach which worked before and failed to recognise the novelty of the situation.
Now, however, he said, "we have a tremendous amount of work to do" to get the concept to work, particularly in the realm of its application.
Already, he told the commissioners, some sister Caricom states like Jamaica, and to a lesser extent Trinidad and Tobago, have had success in effecting army-police collaboration in pursuit of national security. In Jamaica, for example, both agencies reside under the Ministry of National Security.
He also tried to impress upon the Commissioners the idea that there were no alternatives to these two agencies which, in the operational and economic realties, were the resource bodies.
Meanwhile, Luncheon said the economic reality of the government was that it was stuck between a rock and a hard place to source funding for the security forces and in particular the police force.
"We have done the best that we can do," Luncheon considered, later adding, "...money is finite."
He admitted that Government does recognise that funding for the security forces was its responsibility and efforts over the years had relied almost totally on national resources which were not enough.
But, he said, the outreach to multilateral and bilateral entities had been unfruitful, particularly when it came to law enforcement, which seemed to be the formal policy of the donor-community and international financial institutions.
Luncheon said an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) programme for civilian security was scrapped because no agreement could be reached on hardware, which was essential to Guyana's needs but at variance with the IDB's policies which did not support the supply of guns, armoured cars or protective gear.
And as a country with concessionary loans and finances, he said the funding programmes limited the resources that could be budgeted for the national security sector, particularly the military.
"So [although there] might seem a rather lean attitude towards expenditure on national security in contrast with the rising crime rate and the public perception... support internationally is minimum," he noted.
Luncheon was asked how the commission could be helpful to the government, in terms of a plan of action to move forward. He said recommendations and approaches should be as definitive as possible so decisions could be made by the Parliament, which he said had assumed "an unusually high prominence" in the affairs of the country.