APNU MP Desmond Trotman yesterday accused Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee of abusing his power and trying to intimidate him with regard to a statement he had made during the budget debates about people seeing the “PPP as a criminal cabal”.
Trotman, after being given the go-ahead by the Speaker to make a personal statement, informed the National Assembly that he had received a letter from Rohee and he later circulated copies.
According to Rohee’s letter dated April 19, 2013, he has since “written to the Commissioner of Police (ag) alerting him to the matter. In that regard, I now write you requesting that you provide the Guyana Police Force with any concrete information you may have about this PPP criminal cabal.
After all, the Ministry of Home Affairs is committed to dismantling of any criminal cabal, wherever they might be”.
Rohee said that if Trotman failed to submit any such information to the police, the commissioner has been requested to “dispatch ranks to question you on the said matter”.
Trotman, in his strongly-worded one page response, which he asked the House to place on record, said: “under no circumstances will I be cooperating with the police in this charade. If the Honourable Minister feels as strongly as he claims on this matter, I recommend that he institute charges and place me before the court.”
He also assured Rohee that he will not be intimidated into silence.
The MP then read the section of his contribution which had prompted the letter. It said: “Let me take this opportunity to offer some advice to the Hon. Finance Minister of the minority government – you should get out of your ivory tower and go on the streets.
You will be surprised when you hear what people are saying. You will hear them saying to the majority that in the PPP/C we have a criminal cabal and a dictatorship to dismantle and dismantle it we must”.
He told the House, that on that occasion Rohee took offence at that statement and sought to have it withdrawn or struck from the record. Notwithstanding the fact, he said, that the Speaker ruled that he (Trotman) was only reporting on what people were saying and as such did not trespass beyond the boundaries of parliamentary privilege, Rohee sent the letter to him.
“I will limit myself to pointing out that in the face of your ruling the minister’s letter raises the spectra of the abuse (of) power and threatens the fundamental rights of Guyanese including the political opponents of the government,” he said adding that he believed that the letter “is clearly intended to intimidate me and to violate the privileges which you referred to in your ruling”.
Rohee opted not to respond to Trotman’s statement.
