ON THIS “National Day of Mourning”, when 10 of the 11 victims of last week’s horrific slaughter of children, women and men at Lusignan will be buried, we are compelled to observe that this is also a “national day of shame and disgrace”.

Shame and disgrace that for all the resources placed at their command, and unqualified support being given by the Government to their commitment to uphold the rule of law, our security forces are yet to come forward with ANY practical results in the investigation into that barbaric wasting of so many innocent lives, among them sleeping children in very humble abode.

As if to mock the security forces, one of this nation’s most wanted armed criminals, ex-soldier Rondell (‘Fine Man’) Rawlins, has now resorted to boasting, through managed publicity in another section of the local media, about his direct involvement with the ‘Lusignan massacre’.

He has linked it to sensational allegations surrounding a claimed disappearance of his missing teenaged girl friend, Tenisha Morgan. The police and army have made clear that they have NO knowledge about the whereabouts of the claimed missing and pregnant woman, who Rawlins insists is his common-law wife and bearing his child.

Why would the security forces be holding her in the first place? And why does Rawlins feel that he can win sympathy from ANY section of the Guyanese people, now so deeply traumatised over the Lusignan massacre, by mocking the security forces with threats to destroy many more lives and spread national panic?

No nation can afford to have its security forces humiliated by the jeers of armed criminals like Rawlins. No nation committed to the rule of law can tolerate its security forces being so seemingly paralysed for want of intelligence information to flush out the criminal networks and restore public confidence that has reached a dangerously low level.

Prior to yesterday morning’s proclamation by the Office of the President of today as a “National Day of Mourning”, the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) thought it necessary to make a plea for a multi-stakeholder approach to address what it has described as “seemingly deliberate and diabolical acts of violence which can incite intense racial tension…”

We are trusting in the good sense of the Guyanese people, of all ethnicities and political persuasions, to strongly resist any such inclination. At the same time, to cooperate fully with the security forces to effectively crush the armed criminal gangs and let peace and justice prevail across this nation.

As we mourn, let us all hope for the delivery of speedy results by our security forces in their investigation into the Lusignan massacre and related events that preceded it, including last week’s ambushing of a GDF patrol in Buxton when a corporal, Ivor Williams, was shot to death by the criminal network operating out of that East Coast village.