By Stabroek News
Copyright stabroeknews
Dear Editor,
We either get on the same page or a big building of books is sure to tumble all over our sorry heads. The matter at hand is one of domestic violence. Appalling and searing, it has been. Try to absorb the savagery of 24 stabs wounds. One attacker, one victim. Now, put the mind to work, and check if it can fathom this. Bail granted. After eight months on remand, bail in the sum of $800,000 granted. I confess to making mistakes, but they rarely involve the basics. So, how do I wrap my mind around 24 stab wounds and bail? I can’t.
Whether surface wounds or scratch wounds, 24 stabs point to a frenzy of uncontrollable rage, a terrible, destructive fury bent on closing out a tempestuous chapter in this life. The woman victimized, the partner now brutalized, is lucky to be alive. The alleged attacker has been ordered to stay 100 yards away from her at all times. All he needs is to ignore that cordon sanitaire of the magistracy one time, and there is the high probability of another dreadful headline. One that embarrasses this whole country. Who are these people? It could be the thought harboured by our world of guests now plying their way and wares here? Unlike the acid attack on the two female employees of a private city hospital, there is no uncertainty about the identity of the attacker behind the 24 stabs mayhem. There is certainty, though, about $800,000 bail. Not jail, but bail.
Think of how that contrasts with what Minister of Human Services and Social Security, Dr. Vindhya Persaud, has been contemplating. Some gender-based offenses should not be bailable. I have the minister’s back on that one. Though not anywhere to official at this time, it seems that the draft memos incorporating the visions behind nonbailable have not filtered down into the halls of justice. Recall I said before that we had better get on the same page. I now tighten that recommendation. There’s a need to be on the same paragraph. For there is another issue, one of reconciling bail with what emerged from a couple of Sundays ago. There was an inaugural address. There was Pres. Ali rising on the tips of his wingtips to wax in righteous indignation about how we must “kill” this thing.
He was focused on domestic violence in Guyana. I am stricken to be the bearer of bad news to Pres. Ali so early in his second term. The environment, the brutal, unsparing reality of the scourge of domestic violence, is that more Guyanese will be killed (not could be, but will be) before the domestic violence culture that he so thoughtfully and sensibly wants to “kill” goes into full effect. In fact, a couple did, since that Sunday 7th presidential address.
If 24 stab wounds unleashed in a long convulsion of depraved indifference, as backed up by video evidence, do not suffice to hold a man behind bars, and usher him to a state of remorse and readiness to pay his debt to society, then how many stab wounds will fit the bill? If 24 stab wounds fall short of the mark in the courtyards of jurisprudential sagacity to keep a man penned, then it sounds to me that even 124 such stab wounds might not be enough to keep a perp on the inside. Now all that a frightened woman and partner has that guarantees her continued hold on safety and survival is a piece of paper that says: Stay away! Don’t go near. It seems as flimsy and porous to me, as individual grains of sand on the seashores of Guyana. There’s nothing binding.
I retrace my steps and words on the way out: we are either on the same page and same line with the same mindset on domestic violence, or by our own hand there is self-destruction. Oh, one more thought, the preceding sentence and all that it encompasses applies to most other matters in Guyana. Goodbye.