On August 22nd, amid mounting pressure over the cover-up allegations made by police sergeant Dion Bascom, President Ali told sections of the media that the Barbados-based Regional Security System (RSS) had been asked to “evaluate” the investigation into the murder of gold miner Ricardo Fagundes.
That was of course not the way in which the announcement should have been made. The entire country is interested in and has a stake in the testing of the allegations made by Mr Bascom. An informal, offhand disclosure by the President doesn’t cut it. A week later, the country has absolutely no idea what precisely the RSS has been commissioned to do, how it will go about its work and whether it was the appropriate organisation to undertake this task.
The President’s continued refusal to hold regular press conferences and whenever warranted by events shows an unwillingness to leave his comfort zone where accountability to the public via the media is concerned. This must change. The Minister of Home Affairs Robeson Benn has also not been forthcoming. When asked by Stabroek News about the RSS assignment, he stated “A review advises us like we had with the Henry boys, where the RSS was also involved as to the quality and nature of investigation and what steps to take and what support needs to be bought in to do whatever it be to get to the issues at hand”. He declined to divulge any further details on the matter, stating “I am not going into anything further in this matter. I already said that…..When the time that we need to say something (comes), we will have it done”.
As in all matters of this type, the terms of the engagement should have been made public and it should have been known who in the RSS was undertaking what task along with the bona fides of the person or persons. The RSS has had prior engagements with Guyana during difficult security circumstances but there has never been an evaluation of its conduct as the public has not been privy to any formal report of its activities here.
President Ali should be aware that what is at stake here is the standing of not only the Guyana Police Force but his own administration. Any attempt to whitewash the staggering allegations by Mr Bascom or to simply cast them aside will undermine law and order. For the RSS mission to succeed it has to set out how Mr Bascom’s claims can be credibly tested without this process being compromised by those in the police hierarchy against whom allegations have been made and others who have already tried to cast aspersions on him. This was addressed in Friday’s editorial entitled ‘Cover-up of a cover-up?’
The RSS mission has to lead to the establishing of which policemen were at the scene on the night of the Fagundes murder, which detectives were involved in the investigation from the inception and whether any of them were removed, the type of evidence gathered including whether there were attempts to establish co-ordinates for mobile calls using cell towers and who were the prime suspects and whether they were properly investigated. Were call records for the victim and the main suspects sought from the mobile companies? If not, this would be a grave deficiency in the probe. There is also the not unimportant matter of whether investigators ardently pursued leads deriving from the suspected getaway vehicle which was found torched at Swan on the Soesdyke-Linden Highway. Should there not have been identifiers on the burnout hulk which could have led to records at the Licence Revenue Department as to the most recent owner of the vehicle? What about the myriad cameras that would have been trained on the long getaway path? This is the type of thorough investigation one would have expected to be done of the Fagundes gunning down. Are there connections between senior police officials and suspects which may have possibly impeded investigations?
Resort to the RSS may not have been necessary had the Granger Administration and this one enlivened the Protected Disclosures Act 2018 which is described as “An Act to combat corruption and other wrongdoing by encouraging and facilitating disclosures of improper conduct in the public and private sectors, to protect persons making the disclosures from detrimental action…”
Sergeant Bascom may well wonder if there are undisclosed exclusions from this law as his appeal to President Ali for protection under the Act is yet to be responded to. Despite the clear requirement to treat urgently with the protection of a presumed whistleblower, the President journeyed to Trinidad for an official visit and his since proceeded to the Rupununi, all the while ignoring his responsibilities under the Act.
What measures will the government now take to activate the Act? The Act caters for a Protected Disclosures Commission which under Section 12 (1) would have been empowered to “…adopt the procedure it considers appropriate to the circumstances of a particular case, hear the person of whom the disclosure of improper conduct is made, obtain any information, document or thing from any person and make other inquiries the Commission thinks fit.”
Further, under Section 12 (2), the Commission “…may request the assistance of experts and enforcement agencies to assist in any investigation before it or in obtaining any information, document or thing from an employer or a person and the experts and enforcement agencies shall, subject to and in accordance with their internal arrangements, do all that is necessary and within their power to assist the Commission in the completion of its investigation”.
Whistleblower legislation is now a well-recognised cog in transparent and accountable democracies. The government must move immediately to accoutre the Act and enable it to function. In the meanwhile the public awaits signs from the government and the RSS that Detective Bascom’s claims will be seriously addressed.
