GUYANA (Stabroek News):
MINISTER OF Home Affairs, Gail Teixeira, has called for a boycott of businesses owned by drug lords and other criminals as a means of reversing the out-of-control crime situation.
During an interview with Stabroek News Thursday, the minister said she could not understand the double standards of some persons, who on one hand criticised people involved in illegal activities, yet socialised with them and supported their businesses.
FROM OLD SCHOOL
She told the newspaper that recently she told some people at a function that some of them knew some of the guys who were involved in illegal activities, but yet they attended their social functions and were welcomed.
"I am of the old school ... if you are involved in illegal activities, I will boycott your business and would not go to places with you," she stated.
She urged, "Don't go and buy from them. Don't go and mix with them."
Asked how she could reconcile her call for such action when government has granted concessions to known drug dealers for certain projects including for the Cricket World Cup, Teixeira said, "These are the things that bother me," adding that they are controversial issues.
A United States' State Department report released on Wednesday said that the Guyana Forestry Commission had granted a large tract of land in Guyana's interior to a company controlled by a local businessman, who is a known drug trafficker. It also said that drugs were corrupting Guyana on a dangerous scale.
TWO IMPORTANT PERIODS
The minister said there were persons in society who knew a lot and were involved in a lot of things, but it is not easy to get them.
She explained that if a man was involved in drugs one had to find ways to catch him.
On the issue of the police failure to bring the crime situation to an acceptable level, Teixeira said the deteriorating crime problem had its genesis in the post-elections violence of 1997 and 2001.
She said those two periods basically prepared the ground for a lot of criminal activities, because politics and crime were wedded as husband and wife.
