Dear Editor,
Your Wednesday (Jan. 16) lead news story, headlined “PNC-era weapons trigger probe” has to be the worst politically-hatched tactical offensive by the PPP regime against the PNC, and it deserves to be exposed for the fraud it is.
Not that the PNC has a pristine past because most, if not all, Guyanese who lived through the Burnham PNC in the late seventies know something about both the PNC’s military-style enforcement of party paramountcy and the Ministry of National Mobilization being a State-funded shell ministry for the PNC operations.
But for the PPP to come up with this so-called bombshell revelation and try to pass it off as top national security news insults our intelligence and raises serious questions about the PPP’s modus operandi at this juncture.
Mr. Editor, revisit with me the PPP’s launch of its 2006 re-election campaign bid at Babu John, Corentyne. There was President Bharrat Jagdeo addressing a gathering of PPP supporters when he made a very profound charge that should have been immediately followed by police action or countered by a PNC lawsuit citing slander. He said that the PNC was in bed with criminals and that if it was elected, the guns in the hands of criminals would be used against Indians and PPP supporters, and those criminals would get their hands on more guns.
Yet, after he made this shocking charge, it turned out that the President simply used the PNC’s link to criminals as a scare tactic to draw PPP support and votes. Not only were there no police arrests of any PNC member or criminals believed or known to be associated with the PNC, but right after he was re-elected, President Jagdeo resumed one-on-one dialogue with PNC Leader, Robert Corbin on matters of national importance.
Now we have this new allegation of the army issuing about 240 weapons to a PNC government ministry thirty years ago and that the weapons were never returned, so the PNC should account for them now. But why only now?
Does anyone really believe the President and the PPP didn’t already have this or any other information, accurate or inaccurate, on the PNC and will only use that information whenever the need arises, as was the case with the Babu John charge linking the PNC to criminals and stirring up Indians to vote PPP, or as is the current case where disturbing allegations of torture have surfaced against the GDF on the PPP regime’s watch, and the regime is now under international scrutiny?
With Local Government elections also looming, this hollow call for a probe can serve two purposes: it can be another PPP scare tactic to get its support base agitated so they will vote PPP and keep out that big bad wolf called the PNC, or it can distract attention from the serious allegations of torture by the army against civilians and its own.
The sad element in all of this, though, is that even if the issue of the army-issued weapons is true, and a probe is desirable, the PPP has lost great credibility with the public in the last fifteen years, and it is known to politicize everything it does or says, so that anything it does or says now has to be checked and rechecked for validity and motive.
For example, if we were to do a close-up check on the Mahaicony incident in which the purportedly army-issued weapons were reportedly left behind by three men after engaging the police in a shoot-out, we have to ask why would the three men leave their “army-marked” weapons behind when those very weapons could expose their link and or would have meant the difference between life and death if the police continued pursuing them? Or were the men deliberately trying to let the police find the weapons?
More importantly, who were the three men that were taken into police custody for questioning in connection with the shootout, only to be released without being charged? What about the men’s deportment caused them to be deemed suspects in the first place?
These questions have to be asked and answered in order to eliminate suspicion that these weapons may have been an orchestrated set-up with political fingerprints all over it.
Recall, if you can, the case of the Good Hope Trio, Roger Khan included, who were intercepted with a cache of weapons and a telephone eavesdropping/recording device so powerful that because it is considered a risk to the national security of governments, only governments can acquire and use it. Those three men involved were arrested and charged, but their court case was dismissed and they were released just like the three men were released in the Mahaicony incident.
When the Khan probe and pursuit started in earnest, the PPP regime denied knowing him or anything about his revealed role in the Phantom Squad that worked with government and police officials to extra-judicially wipe out criminals and suspects.
With its own credibility shot on that front, the PPP’s credibility took another hit because of the prevailing perception that during its tenure the narcotics trade flourished right under its nose, and given the known link between narcotics smuggling and gun running, it is obvious that there are more smuggled dangerous weapons in the hands of Guyanese – even on a rental basis – than the 240 army-issued the PPP regime is creating a storm in a tea cup over.
Seriously, whenever the PPP is through trading barbs with the PNC over who got the army-issued weapons and why criminal elements are seeking to wreak havoc with or without army-issued weapons, it still has responsibility as government of the day to have a strategy in place to deal with all sorts of crimes and criminals and not appear to be using the current situation to score political points or win elections.
By the way, to save money and assure real accountability, why doesn’t the PPP regime conduct a simultaneous probe of the army-issued weapons scandal, the 2002-2004 crime wave, and the Phantom Squad extra-judicial massacre involving officers from its government and the police force?
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
