In last Monday’s editorial `Pass this bill’ Stabroek News argued that it was time for the groups in Parliament to reach a compromise on the passage of the anti-money laundering bill as there was a growing risk of financial sanctions hitting the ordinary woman and man.
The point was made that for all of the gnashing of its teeth over this bill, the PPP was being grossly hypocritical as it had had several years with a clear parliamentary majority to pilot the enhanced measures necessary and nearly two years in the last Jagdeo administration when there were explicit warnings from the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force that non-compliance could result in dire consequences.
Further, the editorial went on to say that the period 2003 to 2011 would come to be recorded as “one of the darkest and replete with the most egregious crimes that the AML/CFT bill is seeking to counter. During this period, there is little doubt that rampant money-laundering and the financing of terrorism was occurring in the shadowy activities of the several death squads and the unrestrained activities of convicted drug lord Roger Khan, who was bold enough to state that he had assisted the Jagdeo administration in fighting the crime wave triggered by the 2002 prison escapees. It is a period that will undoubtedly require careful examination of why there was a failure across the board to detect these activities.”
It would appear that this passage in the editorial hit a raw nerve at Freedom House, or more precisely, in the camp of former President Jagdeo as the PPP went into overdrive accusing the newspaper of an attempt to tarnish the “character and successes of the former Bharrat Jagdeo administration”. The statement by Freedom House points to an increasingly frenetic proxy campaign for Mr Jagdeo either for reasons of his international image or for domestic purposes. Time will tell which one it is.
Suffice to say, the editorial had nothing to do with the “character” or “successes” of the Jagdeo administration. Why Freedom House would reel off a compendium of his achievements is perplexing as the editorial did not address the record of Mr Jagdeo’s entire presidency. That would be an exhaustive undertaking too onerous for these columns. Yet Freedom House was moved to argue that “The reality is that Guyana has been placed on the relevant pathway to economic development since, development projects under the Jagdeo Administration continue to impact positively on the daily lives of its citizens.”
While many of the items on the Freedom House list are questionable in terms of their impact, success and propriety, there was one notable omission which would unbalance the cloying hagiography: the fate of the sugar industry. Indeed, the sugar industry was brought to its knees progressively and patently during the 12-year tenure by Mr Jagdeo, highlighted by the no doubt well-intentioned but gigantic failure at the Skeldon factory. Mr Jagdeo takes the major credit for that project. However, as stated before, the total record of Mr Jagdeo is for another occasion.
What is being examined are the actions of the Jagdeo administration that culminated in the manifestation of criminality in its grossest forms. Unfor-tunately for Freedom House, its statement was its worst enemy. The PPP statement opined that the “darkest” period referred to by Stabroek News was triggered by the February 23, 2002 Mash Day jail break and the beginning of a reign of terror in Guyana by criminals. It added that it was during that period the criminal gang of Rondell `Fineman’ Rawlins shot and killed 11 law-abiding citizens including children at Lusignan, 12 persons in Bartica and eight miners who were working to make an honest living at Lindo Creek. The pinning of all three of these massacres on one gang is simplistic and questionable but that, too, is a matter for another occasion.
The breakout from prison was indeed the catalyst for the crime of that period but what cannot be ignored is that a full decade earlier, the PPP/C had been repeatedly warned that security reforms were desperately needed to professionalize the police force, strip away corruption, improve intelligence gathering capabilities and heighten the all-round capacity of the joint services to battle serious crime. These calls went unheeded as the PPP/C was too consumed with wanting to control the police force to permit a revamping. Former President Jagdeo assumed the presidency in 1999 and did nothing to alter that equation despite the fact that the Symonds Report of 2000 – the author of which is now assisting with limited police reforms – had recommended sweeping changes.
So when the notorious five broke out of Camp Street on Mashramani Day 2002 with the intent to cause maximum mayhem, the Jagdeo administration was caught completely flat-footed. It had no answer to the daily carnage. The police force was without adequate leadership, morale was low, ranks were outgunned and not motivated. No solution worked and several key Joint Services operations were compromised by infiltration.
This was when the criminalizing of the state began in earnest. Those who felt threatened by the marauders, many of them in the drug trade and in the deep underworld mobilized themselves and offered their services to those in authority. They conducted their own operations unimpeded by the security forces and when bullet-riddled bodies were discovered there would be knowing looks of unknowing. The term `phantom’ gang was of the Jagdeo administration’s coinage and the unrelenting allegations of connections between death squads and then Home Affairs Minister Gajraj brought the matter into sharp focus.
Into this cauldron, the activities of convicted drug lord Roger Khan became known to all and he would years later seek to stave off apprehension by the local police in relation to the theft of arms from Camp Ayanganna on the grounds that he had helped to beat back the criminals who were rampaging along the coast. Much earlier in the rampage Khan had been nabbed red-handed with electronic eavesdropping equipment and weaponry by alert GDF intelligence ranks in the midst of one of his crime fighting operations. After much hemming and hawing he was charged but like with many other sensitive, clear-cut cases, the charges against him were thrown out and he continued with his operations unimpeded. There have been credible reports that Khan was well-connected with government officials and on one occasion was seen on the premises of the Office of the President. His interconnections with crime, vigilantism and officials of the Jagdeo administration require an investigation of the order of the Commission of Inquiry that will soon embark on an examination of the killing of Dr Walter Rodney.
The PPP statement also went on to say that “Stabroek News must prove beyond reasonable doubt that during the 2003 to 2011 period; `rampant money laundering and financing of terrorism was evident around that time.’ Rather than engaging in scandalous and vexatious allegations, the Stabroek News must come clean and provide the evidence in its pages”. The guilty plea of Roger Khan in a US court to the shipping of drugs to the US, the conviction of others in foreign jurisdictions and the constant interception of drugs from Guyana in various parts of the world provide the starkest evidence of what the PPP seeks. The recruiting and financing of death squads by enforcers and drug lords for political and other purposes would also fall into the categories that the Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (Amendment) Bill is seeking to fight.
There is only one other point in the PPP statement worth exposing, that is the claim that upon the death of `Fineman’ in August of 2008 the government “embarked on national consultations aimed at reforming the Guyana Police Force.” This is absolute piffle as the comprehensive report of the Disciplined Forces Commission (DFC) had been delivered in 2003 and not implemented. So derelict was the government in this respect that it is still today trying to address some of the key DFC recommendations and the Minister of Home Affairs is well into the second year of another supposed set of reforms which are still to yield results. Any consultations held after the death of `Fineman’ would merely have been for the purpose of throwing up a smokescreen.
It remains the case that the PPP/C continues to toy with security reform and the operational readiness of the police force. The force remains in dire need of professionalizing and this grave lack will not be aided by airbrushing former President Jagdeo’s record.