The advertisement, an “updated report card on the Government of Guyana”, is directed at Commonwealth Heads of Government and Delegations. According to the AFC, “the signs are there, Guyana’s democracy is failing.”
The first in a list of eight complaints in the advertisement is the failed promise President Bharrat Jagdeo had made during the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago in April that freedom of information legislation would be introduced in Guyana in two months. The AFC added that it is shameful that after some 17 years of PPP rule in Guyana, the monopoly control of radio by that government still continues.
The opposition party said that even after revelations were made in a US court implicating a government minister of complicity in killings by a “phantom” force, President Jagdeo refuses to accept a public call for an independent investigation. Similarly, it said that no inquiry has been held into the numerous killings by the security forces or allegations of government’s links to narcotic gangs.
Parliamentary reform measures recommended by the Commonwealth and which gained parliamentary approval are not being implemented in Guyana, the advertisement said. Its fifth complaint is that it has been eight years since the Guyana constitution was amended to introduce a Public Procurement Commission to ensure transparency and accountability of government spending, but this commission is yet to be established.
The political party said also that a desperately needed Security Sector Reform Programme, funded by the British Government, has been abandoned leaving the Guyanese people in peril, while the Head of State announced the presence of terrorists engaging the government in Guyana at a November, 2009 press conference.
The AFC concluded by stating that recent revelations of the badly burnt and tortured body of a 15-year-old boy held in police custody not only shocked the Guyanese public but also revealed that “torture has become a standard interrogation tool in Guyana”.
An AFC ad had appeared in the same publication during the April Summit of the Americas.
