Hailed on occasion by PPP/C officials as being some of the brightest in the country and utilized in various capacities at high levels, for this electoral campaign the ruling party has now declared personnel from the security services persona non grata and warned that they are not good for the country.
“It looks like we have a legionnaires club of old military people who want to establish a de facto militarised country again here in Guyana,” Minister of Public Works Robeson Benn said in Bartica last week and emphasised that the PPP is warning people against this development. He said they “must take warning that we have to keep these people out if we want to continue on the path of development and progress.”
“Like many Latin American political organisations, the APNU has increasingly become openly military run. Its leaders are formally retired military officers and their military minds are forever at work,” Head of the Presidential Secretariat and Secretary to the Defence Board since 1992, Dr Roger Luncheon said in a recent letter to Stabroek News. “I lament and repeat the disappointment I personally felt by my friend, (APNU+AFC presidential candidate) Brigadier (rtd) David Granger’s design to lead a political party that is attracting openly managerial support from other retired military servicemen and women and assumedly from active ones too,” he said in another letter.
The Government Infor-mation Agency (GINA) also reported Luncheon as saying that the “apparent militarization” of the leadership of the APNU has caused consternation for government.
Luncheon stressed that there is no question as to the “militarisation” of the main political opposition, hence the “depth” of consequent concerns.
The fact that when government sees the military and APNU getting back together does raise suspicions, Dr. Luncheon said and was quoted by GINA as saying that this “causes us to wonder, what if? Suppose, heaven forbid, APNU were to succeed in 2015 elections, obviously they would have a serious debt to pay to these military personnel who are back, as it is.”
APNU, he added, has always supported government’s efforts to equip and resource the military, hence, “One can only wonder, were this opportunity to be provided again, would we be certain that we won’t have the same outcome, that indeed, in the face of an opposition, in the PPP, that that same military in the Burnhamite era that supported the PNC in their undemocratic actions might not be coerced into doing the same, under a possible APNU administration.” He said that he wrote to Granger saying to him that the military injection into his partnership is the worse decision he ever made in his life.
Brightest
Though now opposing the involvement of ex-military personnel in politics, the PPP/C has over the years made use of persons from the security services to serve in various capacities at high levels within government.
At the annual officers’ conference of the Guyana Defence Force on January 11, 2011 the then president Bharrat Jagdeo said that some of the brightest people and leaders are among them and urged the officers to set their sights on the bigger picture because “you would have to implement it.”
Jagdeo told the officers that there is need for some of them in the state agencies and he singled out the Guyana Geology & Mines Commission. “I need some soldiers in there.
The corruption in the field is unbelievable, particularly with the price of gold where it is and I need to clean up some of this situation there too,” Jagdeo had said. He added that there are some other areas that need strengthening and discipline.
While the then president did not send any soldiers to the GGMC, other officers were tapped for various services.
Among the most prominent is retired Major-General Joe Singh who was the Director General of the now defunct Guyana National Service, following which he was appointed Chief of Staff of the GDF by the late President Desmond Hoyte.
Follow-ing his retirement from the GDF, Singh was appointed Chairman of the Guyana Elections Com-mission by the PPP/C government but resigned after the 2001 General Elec-tions.
In February 2011, it was announced that the government had appointed Singh as Chairman of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) Board but following strong agitation from the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners’ Association (GGDMA), he resigned in August 2012. A statement from the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment at the time, said that Singh served with distinction, commitment and integrity and the strides made under his leadership in “aligning the mining sector, and more particularly the GGMC for future opportunities and challenges will be consolidated.” The statement added that the Government, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment and the GGMC will continue to value Singh’s wisdom and experience.
Special Assistant
In 2012, it was revealed that Singh was appointed as Special Assistant to the President. He remains employed by the government in the same role.
The PPP/C has also looked overseas for ex-servicemen. In August 2006, Jagdeo announced that he was hiring former New York Police Department head Bernard Kerik to provide general advisory services to the President and the Minister of Home Affairs and assist with reforming Guyana’s police force. Jagdeo had been criticized for hiring Kerik as his security advisor and had adamantly refused to go back on his decision despite the many negative reports about Kerik and his past. “We will hire Mr. Kerik. We don’t have to offer any apology to do that,” he had said at one point.
In April 2007, Kerik withdrew his contract saying that he did not want to “taint” the image of Guyana.
He was subsequently sentenced to four years in a US prison in February 2010 after a federal judge blasted him for using his high-profile part in the city’s 9/11 response to make money. Kerik’s guilty plea in a November 2009 plea deal including admissions that he lied to the White House, filed false tax returns and lied about US$255,000 in work done by a mob-linked contractor.
Other high-profile appointments of ex-servicemen include former GDF Lieutenant Colonel Sydney James who was recently appointed Assis-tant Commissioner of Police and Head of the Special Organised Crime Unit of the Guyana Police Force last year by government. James had served the army for 34 years.
Former PPP/C Minister of Home Affairs Ronald Gajraj who is now ambassador to Indian and Bangladesh was also a member of the GDF.
The PPP/C government also appointed Retired Colonel Chabilall Ramsarup as Head of the Civil Defence Commission (CDC). He had served as the Head of the CDC from a period beginning in 2005 before was assigned by government as the Commissioner of Customs and Trade Administration within the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA). Major General (ret’d) Michael Atherly who was a former Chief of Staff of the GDF was then appointed as head of the CDC.
However, in 2009, Ramsarup was reassigned to the CDC while Atherly was promoted to the position of National Security Coordinator in the Na-tional Security Secretariat at the Office of the President.
Former Commissioner of Police Floyd McDonald also served as an advisor to the government and is the Coordinator, Task Force on Fuel Smuggling and Contraband, operating out of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The Jagdeo administration had extended the service of former Police Commissioners McDonald, Laurie Lewis and Henry Greene long after they had passed the statutory age of retirement. When the US revoked their visas after accusing them of links to criminals, the PPP/C government was staunch in its backing of McDonald and Greene.
