-sees emerging dictatorship
The Working People’s Alliance (WPA) on Thursday reiterated its commitment to the inquiry into Dr Walter Rodney’s assassination which occurred on June 13, 1980, and declared that “the long overdue inquiry should be held without delay.”
“We therefore call on the PPP/C government to move with urgency to set in motion the arrangements for holding the inquiry. Our support for the process is guaranteed,” the WPA asserted in a statement on the death anniversary of their party leader and eminent historian.
The party also noted the delay in completing the Walter Rodney Monument, explaining that the Executive Committee has been facing a number of stumbling blocks “in relation to the completion of this worthy project.”
One of the difficulties, the party said, has been the raising of the required funds. However, the Executive committed itself to a “more proactive pursuit of this project…,“while acknowledging the tremendous assistance of engineer Egbert (Bert) Carter towards moving the project forward, as well as fabricator Pooran Pitamber.
And pointing to what it described as a “deteriorating crime and security situation” in the country, the WPA it was “deeply troubling” that the “security forces and the government continue to focus their attention and their guns only on Buxton and other African communities as the only places where criminal activity in Guyana flourishes.”
“This has the propensity for a disaster of grave consequences,” the party warned, adding that the manner in which government’s crime fight is being waged has “led to the profiling and stigmatization of African communities and of African young men in particular and a deepening hatred by residents of those communities for the government and for members of the security forces.”
But according to the WPA, criminal activity in Guyana is “widespread and is not confined to the lower echelons of society” but “flourishes in the corridors of power.”
The party also observed that from the ages of those being apprehended and charged by the Joint Services, these suspected “criminals” would “have come of age under the PPP Civic Government.”
“We have a situation now where only certain classes of criminals are singled out and condemned by the PPP/Civic when the most corrosive criminal problem plaguing the country is organized crime: money laundering, fuel smuggling, narco- trafficking, trafficking in arms, and trafficking in persons. The security forces have not dismantled, or even identified and targeted a single organised criminal enterprise,” the WPA charged.
The party said further that it is “forced to conclude that the present situation in Guyana is a prescription for disaster,” as in its opinion “democracy in this country is faced with its severest test as an emerging dictatorship begins to show its claws.”
The party also noted a proliferation of weapons in Guyana and recalled that in 2001 it had called for a review of the laws to deal harshly with gun runners but seven years later it is yet to take place. The WPA said that while the government raves against the proliferation of weapons, its actions send different signals.
And in a comment on the recent polygraph testing of Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit officers, leading to the dismissal of nine of them including the acting head, the WPA said that the government’s move to institute the lie detector tests to some of its employees “would have appeared more credible had the President and his coterie first made themselves available for these tests.”
The party said too that the latest revelation in a US Court of drug accused Roger Khan’s alleged involvement in over 200 executions in Guyana reinforces the claims made by the political opposition and makes a mockery of the statements made by government spokespersons who on several occasions went to great lengths to show that no evidence existed to link him to those killings.
According to the WPA, there is at present a threat to the right to protest although this right is enshrined in Guyana’s Constitution. “However, it is ironic to note that the PPP who enjoyed the freedom to protest under both the colonial rulers and under the PNC … is today denying Guyanese the right to march and protest in the same places they did.” Referring to protests in several countries around the world against the burdens governments are placing on citizens, the WPA urged that Guyanese “must not stand idly by and allow the PPP/C and the security forces to infringe our rights.”
