Attorney-General Basil Williams today said that there has been no compulsory acquisition of the two small lots of land on Carmichael Street, while stating that to engage owners whose lands are under consideration with a view of their acquisition on the question of purchasing them by private sale, could “open one to severe recrimination” if not done under the protection of a Section 4 order as was published in the gazette on September 24, 2016.”
Williams today distributed a statement to the media in which he maintained that his ministry was following through with a process that was initiated by the PPP/C administration and that this process must be triggered before any discussion with the landowners could have commenced.
“I would have no legal basis to discuss any purchase of the lands if the acquisition procedure under the Act was not triggered. Only a real estate would do that,” Williams said in his statement while adding that the “attacks are therefore puerile and precipitate.”
Last Sunday this newspaper reported that Guyana’s High Commissioner to Canada Ambassador Clarissa Riehl and her husband are the owners of one of the Carmichael Street lots being compulsorily acquired by government and that she was caught off guard but was not prepared to relinquish her land.
Williams had told this newspaper, “It was they [the PPP] plan. We inherited it. We inherited the PPP plan to compulsory acquire the land. That is all I am telling you. Nandlall is disappointed they lost the elections and so he didn’t get to do the transaction because he told me, ‘Boss, how y’all could just buy the land for $20 million. That land worth $600 million.’”
He said, “… The staff that I inherited recommended that, especially when I was looking to establish a permanent law reform commission and a law review unit. The current premises could not have accommodated such a unit.”
Sources have since told this newspaper that the matter was discussed at Cabinet level and that an order was made to rescind the decision to acquire the land even though Williams’s statement is insinuating that a decision had not been taken.
