Accused of scaremongering and race baiting, former President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday hit back saying that trust in the military has been “broken” and his critics could report him to the police if he was so bad.
Amid growing tension as the country heads to the polls on May 11, Jagdeo at a press conference at PPP headquarters Freedom House insisted that there is something to fear from the opposition and refused to take additional questions from Stabroek News in relation to his rhetoric on the campaign trail.
Jagdeo has faced increasing criticism of his comments while campaigning from local stakeholders including the Media Monitoring Unit of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) which said that controversial remarks by him at Port Mourant on March 8 were racially divisive. He has since been slapped with a private criminal charge over this. Last evening the electoral observation mission of the Organisation of American States (OAS) expressed concern about the increasingly provocative language in the elections campaign and called on all parties to sign and implement the political parties’ code of conduct.
At Freedom House yesterday, Jagdeo said that seeds of subversion have been sown and trust in the military has been “broken.” He said that recent criticism by former army chiefs Gary Best and Edward Collins as well as former Police Commissioner Winston Felix showed that the trust in an independent army was broken. When asked by Stabroek News whether his opinion represents a lack of respect for servicemen and women Jagdeo responded: “I am concerned that their professionalism will be subverted. I am concerned that they will be asked to do things that they should not do as in the past. I am concerned that political commissars will be appointed not real soldiers coming up through the ranks.”
The former president was asked if his rhetoric could be justified and whether or not he believed it to be scaremongering. Jagdeo said that the opposition’s language has already created an atmosphere conducive to fear saying that it was the opposition that continuously referred to locking people up once in power.
Several opposition members have spoken of jailing persons who have engaged in criminal activities but said that due process would take place.
However, according to Jagdeo, the opposition will “subvert first of all, the professionalism of the army as they have done in the past and they will come for people. I believe we will return to those dark days.”
The former president said that “with the recent migration of a few heads of the army to the PNC camp, they have broken trust. A critical element is trust when the Commander-in-Chief speaks with the Chief of Staff they have to have trust among themselves and they have broken that because one day everything is perfect, everything is perfect you’re working with us…and the next day the day after you leave, suddenly you become bad, the Executive becomes discriminatory.”
Critics point out that several former army heads namely Major General (ret’d) Joe Singh and Major General (ret’d) Michael Atherly have worked in several capacities with the PPP/C government and at the Office of the President without questions being raised. The critics note that another former army head, Norman McLean has had a longstanding relationship with senior PPP/C officials.
Jagdeo refused to take additional questions from Stabroek News in relation to his rhetoric on the campaign trail.
Meantime, the former president accused APNU+AFC presidential candidate David Granger of subverting the professionalism of the army “by forcing them to pledge loyalty to the party in government not the State…they were forced to take ballot boxes, we never asked the army to do any of those.”
According to Jagdeo, “it is a huge fear of mine that what we have sought to build a professional [army] with a large reserve…distance from the Executive, following only lawful command, will be subverted because the same people who subverted that independence of the army, they are resurfacing again and Mr Granger helped to do that. How could you not see that he was the political commissar from the Office of the President over in the army? He was the political commissar, he was the one conducting classes, the ideological orientations of the army…he was the one defending paramountcy of the party, that one must pledge their loyalty to the party. How could this not be a fear of every Guyanese,” he argued.
At a PPP campaign rally at Albion, Berbice on Sunday, Jagdeo had told attendees that if they voted for the APNU+AFC coalition and that party won, they ran the risk of having their homes invaded by the military. A number of ex-senior military and police officers have slammed him over his statements including Best.
Yesterday, Jagdeo dismissed the criticism by Best and insinuated that his appointment should never had happened in retrospect because there may have been no real desire by the former army chief to go after criminal elements. Pressed on this by reporters and asked why as Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces he did nothing to investigate these matters, Jagdeo deflected and said that he would not be disclosing “state secrets” and if he was so bad, why didn’t the ex-military men criticising him not report him to the police.
