The Office of the President and the Alliance For Change last night both condemned the blocking of the road outside of Agricola by residents and the disturbances that followed but they traded blame over what triggered this.
OP accused the AFC and A Partnership for National Unity of conspiring to stage the unrest while the AFC blamed remarks by Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon yesterday for incensing residents of Agricola.
In its statement, OP said it rejected outright any view that the East Bank protests were peaceful.
“These criminal activities have been provoked by the opposition diatribes against (Home Affairs) Minister Clement Rohee which saw Nigel Hughes and Moses Nagamootoo of the AFC declaring an ultimatum to President Donald Ramotar to remove the minister by midnight of October 10”, OP charged, adding that earlier, the Leader of the Opposition David Granger had stated his no-confidence in the police force.
“The government rejected the ultimatum, as a result of which the AFC, by the following morning, reacted by conspiring with APNU to start a new wave of protests at the courts in Georgetown”, OP contended.
OP said that the response was so insignificant that the protestors were encouraged to relocate and intensify their actions at Agricola, employing tactics seen during the Linden protests in July.
“The protestors engaged in blocking traffic there on the East Bank highway, lighting fires on the roadway, burning tyres, attacking police officers, preventing the fire service from operating, assaulting and robbing innocent bystanders and destroying public and private property.
Commuters, women and children have been trapped for hours in non moving traffic and when forced to walk have been subjected to intimidation, assault, extortion and robbery”, OP lamented.
Expressing alarm at the Agricola events, the AFC last night said that they were triggered by reckless statements from Luncheon that the government was “ready to rumble” and that he “looked forward to the fight”. The AFC said it condemned the blocking of the public roadway and the subsequent robbery of innocent citizens on their way home. It appealed for calm.
It added that the “belligerent tone used by the Cabinet Secretary coupled with the provocative singing of `We shall not be moved’ and subsequent laughter were not only callous but perhaps calculated to engineer the exact result witnessed this evening.”
The party said that the deaths of three Lindeners in July, followed by the execution of Shaquille Grant in Agricola, the mysterious disappearance of the two policeman involved in his death, and the shooting to death of an innocent bystander all under the watch of Rohee are evidence of the continued failure of the Minister to create a safe environment.
“The fact that the Government of Guyana considers this Minister’s performance the best available in the cabinet is testimony to the tragic and abysmal failure to provide effective leadership and responsible stewardship of the affairs of the state”, the AFC said.
Noting that Parliament has already expressed its lack of confidence in Rohee, the AFC said Government’s response that “we shall not be moved” evinced not only a complete disregard for the wishes of the elected majority but was an act of defiance and an invitation for conflict.
