A group of placard-carrying youths yesterday protested in front of the chambers of Alliance For Change (AFC) Chairman, attorney-at-law Khemraj Ramjattan, who dubbed them the “phantom demonstrators” because they concealed their faces.
The youths, numbering 14, positioned placards in front of their faces in an attempt to conceal their identities from news cameras and at least one wore a handkerchief over a part of his face. Police arrested one of them.
When a reporter from this newspaper and another moved to approach the demonstrators to find out the reason for the “protest”, they moved off south on King Street.
Ramjattan, when contacted for a comment, said that it shows that the AFC is having an impact and “touching a nerve” in the governing PPP administration. He alleged that the PPP had organized the “protest” and named the party’s general secretary, Donald Ramotar as one of the organizers, a charge Ramotar denied, when contacted. “I can assure you I had nothing at all to do with that”, he told Stabroek News. The PPP General Secretary asserted that had he organized a protest, there would have been at least 200 to 300 people present. He reiterated that he did not know anything about the protest.
Meantime, Ramjattan stated that he expects more will occur in the future as, according to him, the PPP has embarked on a “fear and smear” campaign.
The AFC and other political parties have embarked on a series of actions in an attempt to hold the government accountable following revelations in a US court about senior government officials having links to confessed drug-trafficker, Roger Khan.