Dear Editor,
Former PPP minister and current PPP Central Executive member, Mr. Nigel Dharamlall has been accused again. He has made local headlines, features in one of the most widely followed international media channels, CNN, and is now the frenzy of what seems like every platform on social media. I can tell by what has been sent to me, the overwhelming deluge of it. Now I have my own say. Many may not appreciate it, but so be it. I persist.
Mr. Dharamlall is not a likeable fellow. But that does not bar him from the broadest provisions of his constitutional rights and protections to all the elements of due process. Nigel Dharamlall the citizen is due those sacred rights, and he must get them to the fullest. I assert this and I mean this. What is due to every Guyanese is due to Mr. Dharamlall, no matter how little use I have for him. I now switch lanes.
First, the Guyana Police Force must engage in and deliver an investigation that is most thorough, most professional, most credible. Only then will there be the first steps towards full and true justice, that is the inviolable right of the alleged victim. This young woman, I understand, is not a run-of-the mill accuser, but someone who is a 16-subject CXC winner. On this occasion, there must be no influence of any kind on this investigation. Any whiff of such, and it is over. A useless and discredited investigation not worth a single letter in that word. Second, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) must not peer into this, not weigh into this, not lean in and interfere in any way in this matter to influence its outcome one way or the other. I believe that to do so would send the wrong messages, the worst ones. About justice possibly thwarted and denied. About perceptions that the natural course of justice has been railroaded and minimized. About the justice that is due to the alleged victim withering on the vine from the get-go. In essence, the DPP’s Office must be nowhere around, above, behind, or under this matter until such time has properly come.
Now I reach into the political realm. There is no avoiding this step. I cannot and will not. Third, there is widespread awareness that one of the young women that accused Mr. Dharamlall is of Amerindian origin. Mr. Dharamlall, then a minister of the national government, always featured prominently. Using this recent backdrop, it is mindboggling that the Amerindian contingent of delegates to the PPP Congress could have abandoned their dignity and voted for Mr. Dharamlall contributing to his final tally of votes for the party’s Central Committee, his breaking into the top ten of the PPP hierarchy. Guyanese can conclude whether rigging or coercion.
Whether so or not, the People’s Progressive Party must not close ranks again around Mr. Dharamlall; party and government must stand aside and let a full and fair investigation be done. Advancing this further, the history of the party’s treatment of women has been appalling, added injury to obscenity. There was the case of a former PPP president who was deemed to be abusive and derogatory to a spouse. There was the more recent instance of the family of a former PPP president (more females once more) reviled publicly by party follower(s). Surely, former president Jagdeo has some decency to speak out sincerely against this latest accusation laid on the head of their Central Executive comrade, Nigel Dharamlall, regardless of what has reported to be the horrors of his ways.
Fourth, I call on the female ministers in the PPP to take a stand for once, and in no uncertain terms (genuine ones) against an accused comrade with an ugly history. Distance from him female Minister Vindhya Persaud. Call him out female Minister Gail Teixeira. Speak up female Minister Susan Rodrigues. Condemn frankly what has been alleged female Minister Priya Manickchand. The party cannot mean so much. Minister Persaud has responsibilities that cover children and gender. Do duty Minister Persaud. Say something and mean it. Mean it, stand by it, live it. Let the chips fall. All these women ministers are privy to many abhorrent details of what have been hurled at Nigel Dharamlall. These women have their own sources, their own trusted relationships, their own female intuitions. They know and they must act now. Do not defend, do not be near, do not be silent.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
