The Alliance For Change (AFC) on Thursday called on the Guyana Police Force to make a special effort to identify “the intellectual authors and perpetrators” behind the recent criminal acts and to find out whether their activities were separate individual scheming or part of a joint enterprise.
The party’s prime ministerial candidate Sheila Holder told a media briefing that her party condemns the grenade explosion at the Stabroek Market square, the lobbing of a firebomb at the home PPP/C’s parliamentarian Philomena Sahoye-Shury and the arson attacks on the Enterprise and Annandale primary schools.
She said the recent acts all “signal very ugly incidents which must be met with outright condemnation.
“Guyanese across the political, class and ethnic divide will all be adversely affected; very directly in some cases, and indirectly otherwise.”
Holder said the party believes that the intellectual authors and the actual perpetrators are the only ones who would benefit from such criminal acts.
She said violence in a year when elections are to be held will cause tremendous fear to be driven into the minds of electors and cause major distractions from important, dominant issues of the day. Such acts, Holder said will also create a contrived instability on the political landscape and can stir up racial tensions.
Meanwhile, executive member of the party Martin Chung said the party regards the government’s handling of the Stabroek Square vendors following the grenade explosion as “ill-advised and tantamount to burning down the house to find the pig.”
He said such “bull-dozing attitude” is not in keeping with the humanism that is required whenever termination of livelihoods is concerned. He said even if the square was a haven for lawlessness this must not be countered by “executive lawlessness.” Chung further stated that his party noted how the vendors were being “booted around and being used like a political football” while President Bharrat Jagdeo plays the “role of saviour.” He said Jagdeo–who he said loves to micro-manage–was undoubtedly the one who had instructed the demolition of the stalls. “There must be a more systemized, orderly arrangement for the establishment and enforcement of vending in the city and countrywide to bring a sense of certainty to the lives of vendors,” Chung said.
He said vendors, by virtue of the acquiescence of the authorities, are led to legitimately expect that their stalls will not be removed. When they are suddenly demolished without notice, this will create anger and hardships and “a disequilibrium which inevitably will result in a multiplicity of societal ills.”
The party also said that enough jobs are not being created by the government for men and women and it is their fight to survive that forces persons into being itinerant vendors.
