APNU presidential candidate David Granger yesterday said that the PPP/C administration must bear “full responsibility” for the country’s high crime rate, as opposition groups dismissed claims by the PPP/C presidential candidate Donald Ramotar and President Bharrat Jagdeo of links by prominent members to criminals.
At a campaign rally on Saturday in Bartica, Ramotar lambasted several opposition leaders, including Granger and his running mate Dr Rupert Roopnaraine as well as the AFC’s candidates Khemraj Ramjattan, Raphael Trotman and Moses Nagamootoo, saying they had no “moral right” to hold public office and sought to link some with criminals. Presi-dent Jagdeo, speaking just before Ramotar, stated that US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks said that the PNCR had a hand in the events in Buxton during the post-2002 crime wave and some of the same individuals terrorising Buxton were part of the gang that committed the 2008 Bartica massacre. He said that if that party were to get into power, guns would be given to the criminals.
“APNU has rejected charges that the PNCR had ever been involved in criminal activity,” Granger said yesterday at an APNU press briefing, while accusing Jagdeo of “attempting to evade his own culpability for 12 years of mismanagement of the country’s security by engaging in his wild diversionary statements.”
Granger insisted that the ruling PPP/C administration must “bear full responsibility for the high rate of armed robberies, banditry, murder and piracy plaguing the country today.”
He added that the president and other ruling party spokes-persons can make unsubstantiated allegations against the PNCR because there was no investigation.
“We are confident that if an investigation was held into the Lindo Creek massacre or the assassination of Sash Sawh that there would be nobody in this country who would point their finger at PNCR or APNU,” he added. “The PPP/C has a good reason for not convening these inquiries and these investigations. It has a good reason for accepting the assistance of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for investigating the assassination of Sawh. If they really wanted to get to the bottom of that crime they would have accepted the assistance from the Canadians, they would have accepted the offer of assistance from the British to establish a security sector reform action plan and Guyana would become a safer place but the PPP/C has a lot to hide. That is why they can go to Bartica and accuse people who are innocent,” Granger charged.
“They have a lot to conceal that is why they are speaking as they are speaking because there is no investigation, there is no inquiry. No inquests are held. Hundreds of people have been killed without inquests,” he added.
Granger noted that there has been a sharp increase in the country’s murder rate during the PPP’s time in office, particularly during Jagdeo’s tenure. “Murder rates have tripled to three times that of the US and everyone knows that narco trafficking has increased, murders have increased, domestic abuse, armed robberies have increased under him and we are going to continue to highlight [it]…,” he said. “The only way people can find out what happened and prevent a recurrence or take corrective action is by having commissions of inquiry and that is exactly what the PPP/C refused to do and it is deliberate,” Granger added.
Meanwhile, presidential candidate for the AFC Khemraj Ramjattan, when reached for comment, said that it was ridiculous for the PPP/C members to try to link him to criminals because of this job. “I defended all manner of men and all manner of causes that is the oath I took as a lawyer and that is what I will do,” he said. He said that very often he has taken on criminal cases pro bono. “It is ludicrous and it can only come from a Jagdeo who doesn’t know a thing about the rule of law,” Ramjattan said.
Ramjattan told Stabroek News that many of the cases that he did while he was actively involved in criminal law were recommended to him by Jagdeo, Ramotar and even late former president Janet Jagan. Pointing to the PPP/C administration, Ramjattan said that significantly the party’s leadership had chosen two of the most outstanding criminal lawyers in Bernard De Santos and Doodnauth Singh to serve in the position of Attorney General. “Is he saying that these lawyers were criminal?” Ramjattan asked.
Jagdeo, Ramjattan opined, is trying to provoke people and to goad them into some measure of violence, noting that the statements being made by the President go against the spirit of the proposed political party code of conduct that the PPP/C has said it would sign on to. “The President is the greatest violator of this code yet he wants us to sign on to this code of conduct,” Ramjattan said.
Asked if the party will be lodging a formal complaint about the remarks made at the PPP/C rally, Ramjattan opined that there was no procedure for complaining. He, however, opined that the relevant authorities are hearing the abuses for themselves and could act on their own. “[The Guyana Elections Commission] should openly condemn him,” Ramjattan said, “they don’t need to hear from Ramjattan or [Nigel] Hughes,” he opined.
