PPP General Secretary Donald Ramotar has dismissed criticism that the governing party lacks the political will to implement the necessary reforms for the security sector and is urging that crime not be made a political issue.

A frequent criticism of the successive PPP/C administrations has been their failure to address crime and implement agreed reforms – an argument highlighted when the UK scrapped a £3M security reform project last year. The UK has said that the final Guyana government proposal for the project suggested a focus on police modernisation, rather than on holistic security sector reform, which led to the decision to withdraw its offer of assistance.

Ramotar, in an interview with Stabroek News last week, defended the PPP’s commitment to national security. He acknowledged that crime has evolved over the last few decades and he identifies the US success in curbing drug exports from Colombia as being particularly influential in forcing traffickers to seek to penetrate other territories, including the Caribbean. He also observed that the burgeoning drug trade in the region has also brought with it the proliferation of guns in many societies. “That is one of the things we need to concentrate on – getting these weapons off the roads,” he said.

He did, however, bristle at the suggestion that the administration is uninterested in reforms. “Not only is [national security] important to society but it is important to our political future, so why should we want to fight against it?” he questioned. Addressing the collapse of the UK-funded SSRP, Ramotar said the issue at the heart of affair was a disagreement on how to approach the implementation. “It wasn’t that we didn’t want the reform,” he emphasised, “It’s not a question of not wanting it; the government has made the request for the assistance from wherever we can to fight crime.”

The failure to implement the recommendations of independent and bi-partisan panels in the security sector – the 2000 National Security Strategy Organising Committee report, the 2001 Border/ National Security Committee report, the 2003 Disciplined Forces Commission report and the 2005-2009 National Drug Strategy Master Plan  – has also been a source of criticism for the administration. On this question, Ramotar noted that it is the government that has initiated the establishment of many of the commissions, but he suggested that one of the reasons for the lack of implementation has been the fact that the administration does not always get the cooperation it wants. What is more, he said, the government remains strongly committed to national security, as evidenced by its spending on the sector as well as legislative reforms that have been enacted.

Asked why there has been no prosecution of any major drug trafficker, he said he did not want to speculate. “There could be many reasons but I don’t want to speculate. The fact is, I think – let me just give you the principle of it from my point of view, because I am not engaged in the security sector in a detailed way – but I can tell you that we are trying to push and to encourage the fight… against drug trafficking,” he said, while noting that President Bharrat Jagdeo has lamented not getting needed cooperation from the US Drug Enforcement Agency. Ramotar added, “At a political level, a lot has been done [towards] implementing these agreements but that they have failed, maybe that needs another type of examination but I don’t think there is a lack of political will.”
‘Badly miscalculated’

Meanwhile, recently, the opposition parliamentary parties have been lobbying government to invite an international commission of inquiry to investigate human rights abuses here. The call has been propelled by the revelations about drug kingpin Roger Khan’s activities here, following key convictions in the US. As part of its lobby, the opposition recently adopted a stance of selective participation in the activities of the National Assembly.

According to Ramotar, the opposition has “badly miscalculated” with the political tactics it has been using. He noted that the PPP had used similar strategies during its opposition to the Forbes Burnham regime but pointed out that conditions were totally different. Although he admitted that he had not given “deep consideration” to the calls for an investigation of the crimes, he said he understood that “mechanisms are now kicking in,” referring to the work of the police force as well as the holding of inquests. “And I would like to see the system work, like you have inquests to inquire into these types of crimes and not to make crime a major political issue,” he said.

Ramotar has conceded that security forces abuses were among the setbacks of the last year. Among the most serious cases during the year was the murder of Bartica gold dealer Dweive Kant Ramdass, allegedly by members of the Guyana Defence Force Coast Guard. The case was followed shortly after by the torture of a teen boy allegedly by members of the Guyana Police Force while in custody. Ramotar, who said he was unsure what has fuelled the situation, said the PPP has a “lot of concern” about the recent abuses. “We have fought against those things all our lives,” he explained, noting the party’s work while in opposition and during the colonial period. “We fought against excesses and brutality of the security forces and our position has not changed in relation to those things,” he added.

Further, he said the party also shares the concerns expressed by citizens groups about the conditions of some prisons. He said the party has been urging government generally to try to improve those conditions.

Ramotar disagreed with the criticism that the government/PPP has created an enabling environment for abuses to take place by being “ambivalent” about past excesses, like the coinage of the term “roughing up” to describe the abuse of soldiers during interrogation. The term was used during a parliamentary debate by Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud, who reported that an army investigation found cases of “roughing up,” and that in the light of the “new face of criminality” the security forces would use “a certain amount of physical and mental pressure” in order to get information. Persaud subsequently issued a statement saying there is no place for excesses by the security forces, and insisted that he does not support the “roughing up” of persons during  questioning. “That was an unfortunate statement that was taken out of context,” Ramotar said, noting that there was a big difference between what was alleged and what was found. He reiterated that the PPP is against all torture. At the same time, he said the force being used in the conduct of the work of the security forces has to be related to the force that is necessary to carry out their job from time to time. “I don’t expect anyone will say that the PPP [should] send out policemen to fight criminals who have AK-47s with batons,” he added.