…crime sleuth?
Back in the days of his (dissolute) youth, one of your Eyewitness’s vices was the voracious consumption of paperback detective crime novels. Hard boiled, crack crime sleuths like Mike Hammer filled (and fired!) his imagination as to how to crack those mysteries that stumped the (invariably) slow-witted “flatfoot” cops.
Two months after the gruesome murders of those three youths on WC Berbice – with the Police seemingly no closer to solving the case – your Eyewitness did wonder when we’ll be getting our own “Private Eyes”.
But yesterday, it would appear that another pulp fiction character jumped out from the pages of a slightly different genre to set matters right – Perry Mason! remember him? Yup…the criminal lawyer who, even though he had a private eye to dig up the dirt, was able to solve the most complex murders by simply thinking them through in his head. Well, our local Perry Mason called a press conference – virtually in these COVID times, of course – and if he’s to be believed, pretty much has the mystery cracked!!
In classic Perry Mason style, he walked us through the “facts” of the murder of the two Henry cousins. But even though he mentioned the Harish Singh murder and showed a slide of the latter’s relatives showing him the scene of young Harish’s murder, he didn’t get into any speculation on the perpetrators of Harish’s murder. Was that not a mystery?
There was one “fact” that our local Perry Mason (henceforth LPM) brought up, however, that your Eyewitness wondered about its relevance. He dwelled on the function that was held at Parade Ground in Georgetown – in front of hundreds that noticeably included the Opposition and their camp followers – supposedly to offer eulogies to the Henry boys, but which turned into a good old-fashioned political rally. LPM explicitly belaboured – as he’d done at the original function – that several slaves had been beheaded on the grounds two hundred years ago. While your Eyewitness isn’t a lawyer, he’d read enough Perry Mason novels to conclude that our LPM was “leading” us to conclude that the Henry murders was in the same mould as the previous beheadings.
But were the murders solved by LPM? Not quite. He did offer what he obviously though was a significant “clue” when he claimed that the paddy (he said “rice”) in the field next to where one of the bodies was found was harvested even though it wasn’t as “ripe” as other rice. He obviously was suggesting that this was done to “destroy the evidence”. And this person had been arrested and released.
Did LPM consider that rice fields are harvested in sequence from where the combine leaves the trail?
…drug interceptors?
Recently in the news was the announcement that our Armed Forces have acquired four Bell helicopters to aid in the fight against drug smuggling. There was the incredulous figure of US$256M as their cost!! Even though the purchase had been made by the now (thankfully) departed profligate PNC Govt, that price could only be so if they were filled with the same drugs they were supposed to interdict!!
What was actually the case was that the copters were part of a military package of US$256M that the US Government had approved. These babies usually go for approximately US$12M a pop. Not exactly chicken feed, but certainly not US$256, which could have gotten us several Boeing 737s!! But what popped into your Eyewitness’s mind was: Whatever in the world did the PNC do with those five drones they’d bought for $180M? Weren’t they also supposed to interdict drug shipments?
Now that they’ve been made redundant (which they always were!), are they going to be handed to the state media to get some better overhead shots?
…utopia creators
Your Eyewitness mentioned those self-appointed “civil society” wags who proposed there must be “national consultations” on electoral reform to solve the ailments of our body politic.
But who diagnosed the ailment, to begin with?
