Dear Editor,
Strange fruit, a poem by a white Jewish school teacher, Abel Meerpol, was immortalized in song by the inimitable Blues icon, Billie Holiday in 1939. It has since been etched in the consciousness of audiences across the world by Nina Simone, the incomparable. The lyrics of Strange Fruit speak to the physical, social and political contradictions of the US south in the 1930s
Shortly after discussing this song with a friend the lyrics came to mind as I read reports of the proceedings of the inquiry into the July 18th Linden murders and the notice that the Police issued for the interception of the two missing policemen associated with a case that the authorities had hitherto claimed merely involved apprehension of an Afro-Guyanese for an alleged crime. Guyana’s contradictions today also involve, on the one hand, a Government which claims it is committed to fairness, justice and democracy but which, on the other hand, is party to corruption, murder and brutalization of African communities and debasing of national institutions, such as the Police Force, supervised by a clique of cynical and untrustworthy Ministers of Government.
In so far as any of this existed prior to 1992, Dr. Jagan’s accession to office was supposed to mark a new dispensation – lean and clean government by the PPP. Dr. Jagan pledged this and the electorate expected him to keep his word. In 2011, another election fought on these very issues, led to the PPP loss of its Parliamentary majority. Unlike the loss by a previous PPP Government, Mr Jagdeo’s could and dared not blame the CIA or external forces for their loss.
In spite of that loss and the obvious political signals, the PPP administration continues under a new President with a theology involving the public embrace of democracy and racial tolerance whilst pursuing newspeak and systematic intimidation of sections of the populace.
The most recent fruit of that theology has been demonstrations and murder in Linden. An intriguing inquiry is underway into the Police shooting of the unarmed demonstrators, three of whom, Shemroy Bouyea, Ron Somerset, and Allan Lewis died on July 18th. The Commission’s terms of reference have been the subject of delay and confusion, as has been the composition of the team. A ‘no-confidence vote’ has already been passed by the Parliament against Mr. Clement Rohee, based on his handling of events surrounding the shooting to death of the aforementioned youths. Since the Parliamentary debate, the Attorney General (A.G), Mr. Anil Nandlall has been trying to stay the hand of the House on the grounds that its action should await either a Court or Inquiry decision. To this end, he approached the Courts to seek protection of Mr. Rohee from the consequences of the no-confidence decision motion. The A.G, is clearly a man who likes to hedge his bets.
Some observers have been asking about the relevance of the no-confidence motion especially now that there is an inquiry underway and the matter is attracting the attention of the Courts as requested by the A.G. The answer is straight-forward. The Courts deal with challenges to behaviour relative to what is permitted by law. In other words it makes decisions about legal rights and breaking the law. An MP’s parliamentary standing rests entirely with the National Assembly, ‘the House’. The House must decide on the acceptability of a member’s performance and behaviour vis a vis its rules or assessment. In the exercise of those powers vis a vis Minister Rohee it does not require the views of the Judiciary unless, improbably in the circumstances, he is found guilty of a criminal act. A Minister is responsible for and is therefore accountable to the House (and has to answer questions on) for the Ministries and entities to which he/she is assigned by the President. Continued membership of, and standing in, the House is a matter neither for the President, the Courts nor a Commission, but for the House itself. The President appoints Ministers but Ministers can only function and give instructions about spending public monies if the House explicitly imbues him/her with such rights. The President cannot give them such rights so if the House excludes a member neither the President nor the Courts can restore them.
This distinction is critical to Parliaments but not peculiar to Parliaments. Most football fans would have followed the case of John Terry, the former English football captain, accused of racially abusing Anton Ferdinand, another player, a charge (a racially-aggravated public order offence) for which he was found not guilty by the Courts in July. He has since been summoned and found guilty by an independent regulatory commission of the English Football Association of having infringed their rules and his obligations as a player by racially insulting (‘hateful abuse’) an opponent. He was therefore sanctioned notwithstanding the decision of the Courts.
Mrs Thatcher resigned in response to an expression of no-confidence conveyed to her by a senior Cabinet colleague and, on the night of 28th March 1979 a dramatic no-confidence vote brought down the Government of PM James Callaghan. The Government lost that motion by a single vote.
The recent prosecutions or dismissals of Ministers elsewhere in the region have justifiably attracted comment from Guyanese observers. Here the PPP appoints Ministers, few of whom see virtue in resigning.
The House has the power and ability to discipline its members – on any side of the floor. In that context when on July 30th the House passed a “no confidence” motion against the Minister of Home Affairs he should have resigned. In defiance, the Minister remains in situ, a situation reminiscent of their reaction to calls for his resignation as Foreign Minister because of his demonstrated incompetence while holding that portfolio. It is now 2012 and the Government would be most ill-advised to behave as though it still has a majority in the House.
The A.G, instituted a High Court challenge on September 13th last, against the National Assembly and the Speaker. In essence the Judiciary is being invited to pronounce on and usurp the functions of the House. The Courts have already acknowledged that the House is the master of its rules own and unless it sets out criteria that it infringes or it acts to exceed its powers, such a matter has nothing to do with the Courts. In 1959, Dr. Jagan sought to test the powers of the House to expel errant members. His case was thrown out. The Courts upheld the power of the House to decide on its rules and to decide on and apply penalties for breaking them.
Parliamentarians can only look on with grave concern, therefore, at the frequency and ease with which the Courts have so far entertained the AG’s efforts. Traditionally, the Courts arbitrate the interface between the Executive and the public and, the arms of that Executive and institutions in the private realm. I can recall no similar series of cases of the Crown vs Parliament! Logically, the current situation which characterizes Mr Nandlall’s tenure is absurd.
Let us turn to the vote of “no-confidence” which is the House’s and only the House’s business. It is useful to look at the basis on which the House made its decision. The case against Mr. Rohee was set out very clearly in several presentations delivered by speakers from both the Opposition Parties. They contended that:
The Minister is accountable to the House for overseeing the policy governing police performance. He is statutorily responsible for such policy rather than for operations. He is fond however, of issuing direct instructions to line officers who are in law directly answerable to the Commissioner of Police (COP). This usurpation of the COP’s functions undermines morale and creates inefficiency in the force.
The policy of shooting to kill unarmed demonstrators when no lives or property are at risk is the basis of human rights crimes and, has never been approved by the House or announced by the Government as formal policy nor has it been formally incorporated into the Force’s (GPF) rules of engagement.
On the contrary, the Minister had requested funds to acquire a water cannon on the basis of its efficacy in crowd control and ability to save lives. The use of this equipment was meant to precede that of deadly force. That is not what occurred on July 18th and this is probably the only country in the Commonwealth where a water cannon would be sent to the scene of a demonstration after unarmed persons had been killed!
Shields, batons and other pieces of conventional crowd control equipment were available to the Police force but it chose to outfit officers with assault rifles, revolvers and tear gas only.
The PPP Government behaves as though African-Guyanese demonstrators and protestors have no rights (especially to any type of protest), on the contrary they are to be collectively punished for supporting PNC policies over those ‘28 years’. In that regard an elected PPP Government, however lawlessly it performs, is entitled to do whatever it pleases.
This attitude and the implicit nod-and-wink to Guyana Police Force (GPF) personnel’s brutalization of Africans, including the former Chief of Staff and COP, stand in marked contrast with their approach to actual riots that threatened police/public property and Ministers’ lives in East Indian communities on the East Coast and Corentyne in the recent past. Not a single demonstrator’s life was lost in those cases.
The claim by some PPP speakers in the House that the Minister never sought or had operational control of Policemen or police units and was therefore not responsible for the police actions and the deaths is not borne out by the facts. The House had correspondence from the Minister himself giving instructions to the COP, on matters such as firearms licences and disciplinary action, without seeking or awaiting the advice of the COP. His actions in the case of Assistant Commissioner Ramnarine, who exposed the now depressingly common ‘terminological inexactitude’ of the Minister’s statement to Parliament concerning the actual use of funds that were claimed to have been handed over to the Force, is there for all to see. The fact that the Minister has under the pretext of waiting for the renovation of the Ministry installed himself in the Eve Leary compound confirms the widely held view that he sees himself as having an operational role in the force.
It was no surprise therefore when the Minister was reported in the Press as urging officers attending the Police Officers’ retreat in 2011 to “come out with all guns blazing”. He never denied it or even tried to make it acceptable.
If the latter was a slip of the tongue or the over enthusiasm of a ‘wanna-be-Rambo’, we need to recall that another such ‘wanna-be’, President Jagdeo at a public meeting in 2006 called on the Joint Services team to hunt down and kill the persons involved in a Berbice bank robbery. They dutifully obliged by killing eight men – the robbery itself involved no fatalities. As in the case of the death or phantom squads and ‘Blackie’ London such action lost the detectives and the state valuable information on who was controlling the killing spree.
That logic is the same that saw two officers of the GDF and one of their wives imprisoned just prior to the last elections for treason; saw a young boy held in jail for three days for allegedly showing a rude sign to the President’s cavalcade; four young African-Guyanese spending four days in jail for painting signs on the public roadway; saw a critical journalist jailed for five years and then laughably pardoned by Mr. Jagdeo for an offence for which he was never convicted! Mr Roger Khan and his band of assassins, on the other hand never graced a cell for a day, until they left Guyana.
In Parliament, the Minister failed to account for the behaviour of the Force over which he had oversight. Ms Teixeira, the Chief Whip, argued that if anyone should be penalized it should be she; for she was the Minister in Office during the course of the death squad rampage after 2002 and unorthodox action had to be taken to bring the situation under control. The House was not persuaded by this and was particularly concerned by the refusal of Minister Rohee to accept responsibility for the actions of the Police.
The House accepted the position of the Opposition speakers and passed a vote of “no-confidence” in Mr. Rohee.
The decent thing to do in such circumstances would have been to follow the convention and resign. He now hides behind the shirt tail of the President. Unfortunately for him, the President has no veto as in the case of a Bill. Refusal to act on instructions carried in a motion constitutes contempt. As a consequence, the APNU has already decided that until Mr. Rohee resigns they will entertain no bill laid by him, extend no courtesies to him as a speaker and approve no monies for his Ministries.
I believe that the AFC may share this position.
Unlike the CANU Budget cuts of April, this is a decision that has serious operational as well as constitutional implications.
Some PPP speakers spoke to Mr. Rohee’s success in fighting crime. This claim was rejected because it is fantasy – not a single major execution since the 2002 prison break has been solved. And, notwithstanding the evidence and claims surfacing from the Roger Khan trial, nothing has been done by way of policy initiatives, the search for material resources or by way of new investigations by the police to bring the killers to justice. Indeed, in addition to the contract killings there is now extensive police collaboration with narco-traffickers, the use of torture against persons ranging from minors to soldiers and, the explosion of piracy. It is a sobering thought that in some years execution-style killings alone accounted for over 30% of all murders in Guyana! To crown it all only last week an incident leading to the discovery of an arms cache at Tabatinga, Lethem confirms the widespread suspicion that the Roger Khan enterprise is still alive and active in the country in pursuit of drug trafficking and disorder.
Mr Rohee is a Minister, a Member of Parliament and a paid up member of the PPP “temple”. His social pursuits and extra-Parliamentary behaviour may well flatter the PPP “Clergy” but that is not the business of the Parliament. What is of interest to the House is that he has been associated with a political theology under which he has done the following with complete impunity so far:
As a result of a refugee hearing in Canada in April 2011 it was widely reported that Mr. Rohee had been accused by an IT specialist and his wife of various things, in the presence of a senior Police Officer and a former member of the infamous death squad, at Celina Resort on the night of November 7th 2009. Judge Walters of the Canadian Refugee Protection Division was apparently satisfied with the veracity of the complaint and granted on March 2011 the claim of the couple for refugee status in Canada. The couple’s lawyer, a Mr. Balwant Persaud, subsequently complained publicly in Guyana of trumped up charges being laid against him and of his being harassed as a consequence.
Mr. Rohee is also at the centre of a furor over wiretapping and the interception of phone calls of prominent persons and political opponents under cover of controversial legislation. The further politicizing of the Police and Justice system has been taking place during Mr. Rohee’s watch as exemplified by the arrest of Chief Magistrate Holder-Allen in July 2009 on the absurd charge of allegedly burning down the Ministry of Health and the case of Assistant Commissioner Ramnarine who accused him of political interference.
In 2008 the Bar Association termed his public pronouncements on a Court decision, attempted intimidation of the Judiciary. Other pronouncements such as those in December 2007 about the torture of Messrs Patrick Sumner and Victor Jones of Buxton as well as three soldiers would have been a disgrace uttered by any Minister let alone a Minister of Home Affairs.
The US and Canadian administrations revoked the visa of Mr. Rohee for undisclosed reasons in 2009.
So, even without the Linden events, Mr. Rohee would not have been allowed to continue as a Minister in any other parliament in the region, let alone the Commonwealth. The murder of three unarmed citizens and the maiming of numerous others engaged in peaceful protest is not consistent with the mandate won in 2011. As the member of the temple’s clergy charged with the projection of state power and force, Mr Rohee must take responsibility for the fruit of this theology and he must reap the bitter harvest of his policy.
Yours faithfully,
Carl Greenidge
