Freedom fighters, phantom squad and polygraph testing part of the growing culture of lawlessness

Aug 22, 2009 Letters

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Dear Editor,
When President Bharrat Jagdeo said recently he won’t lose any sleep over criminals gunning down each other – a clear reference to the so-called phantom squad members taking out the so-called freedom fighters – he may have intended to convey the impression he is not bothered by armed criminals wreaking havoc on society, as long as his government is safe, but it was a careless remark that contained a dangerous message on two levels.
On the first level, the danger in the President’s message is to armed criminals. As long as their fight does not target the government the way is clear for them to bring out their guns and declare war on each other. On the second level, the danger in the President’s message is to society. Rather than look to his government to prod the police to deal with armed criminal gangs fighting each other for whatever reason or cause, society should brace itself for the ripple effects of such gun fights. After all, the President couldn’t be bothered to the extent he would ever lose sleep over such trivial matters.
And in reviewing the government’s mishandling of the 2002-2004 crime waves that gave rise to the phantom squad, it is distinctly possible the President may well have been asleep at the wheel of the bus as society’s wheels were coming off and the bus was heading towards a dangerous ditch. That does not bode well for public confidence in him, his government or the police, and may also be indicative of his belief that the antidote for lawlessness is lawlessness. Let the criminals kill out each other. But what exactly is his motive for allowing lawlessness to fester?

When lawlessness, regardless of the players involved, can be condoned by a government, it undermines that government’s authority in dealing with other types of crimes and criminals in accordance with laws that support a working criminal justice system, which caters for due process for suspects and criminals.
Government should never allow willy-nilly arrests, tortures and cold-blooded executions of suspects and criminals to replace due process. Government also should never be in the business of determining who is guilty and subjected to prosecution or persecution, or as is happening now, allowing certain known lawbreakers to continue enjoying their freedom in full view of a discerning public.
By usurping the authority of the police and the DPP, government has managed to create a double standard in its application of the law, thereby opening the door for lawlessness to grow and giving the government unusual powers to selectively punish people it does not like. Take for example, government’s use of polygraph testing to fire certain employees; is there any law in Guyana that allows government to use it to fire state employees? If there is no law, and no court would recognise its use as a means to fire anyone, then isn’t the government engaging in lawlessness by firing employees who fail the test?
Moreover, how can we not see a similarity between this lawlessness in which government is using a method not legally recognised by any court anywhere to fire people and government’s reliance on an illegal phantom squad to extra judicially kill out armed criminals and suspects? Has this government become so unhinged from its constitutional responsibility to the people it serves that it no longer recognise the importance and relevance of the law in its dealings with Guyanese, whether they are criminals, suspects or even state employees suspected of corruption?

No concerned Guyanese should excuse corruption by state employees, regardless of title, and no democratically elected government should be excused for using polygraph tests to selectively determine which state employees should be fired. All criminals and suspects are entitled to due process in the criminal justice system where final decisions about their fate are rendered, and all state employees who are suspected of corrupt practices should be entitled to due process, first, by their agency which must determine something amiss and, second by the criminal justice system if the perceived or actual wrong rises to the level of criminality.
This idea of the government conducting polygraph tests to fire state employees, therefore, is a violation of the people’s constitutional right to due process, runs against the rules of international labour, and it is distinctly possible it is being used as a political weapon to inflict mental and physical trauma to employees so they are fearful of government.
In addition, it obviously is being used discriminately, the same way government discriminates in determining other possible and actual criminal cases, because not all state employees are subjected to polygraph testing. The double standard is spreading fast.
On top of that, no one seems to know which government agency is administering the tests, but from all appearances, the Office of the President seems to be intimately involved, which may be telling us more than OP wants us to know.
See, the first polygraph tests were done on CANU officers and when nine officers failed, they were called in by the President to explain why they failed. When he wasn’t satisfied with their explanations, he had them fired.

That was the first sign the OP was involved, and then the latest clue came when HPS, Dr. Roger Luncheon, made it clear recently that cabinet ministers would not be polygraph tested.
Now, why should the President lower himself to such a level as the arbitrator and fire employees who fail polygraph tests when he was not the one who hired them? Is it not because he has no respect for the laws that do not recognise polygraph testing and which recognise people’s rights?
And why are cabinet minister exempted? Is it because their responsibilities can be easily assumed by the President, using his executive powers, to say or do whatever he wants and so these ministers cannot afford to be tested lest they say things that could get them or the President in trouble? Matter of fact, why is the OP this deeply interested or involved in polygraph testing of state employees anyway? Is it now running a ‘Truth Police’ system with its own unwritten rules or laws? Is it because the President, who cannot be sued or indicted, sees an opportunity to get rid of employees and replace them with ones he wants in those slots? Is there a politically inspired purge taking place in the government’s workplace using polygraph testing?
And who are the people conducting these tests? Are there labour or legal representatives present?
I hold the belief that if polygraph testing was not used to hire employees, it cannot now be used solely to get them fired.
There has to be hard or circumstantial evidence of wrongdoing that can be resolved in a court of law or through arbitration. I have already dispatched letters to the Caribbean Congress of Labour in Barbados, the International Labour Organisation’s Washington office, the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, and the World Human Rights Organisation in New York, informing them of this government’s illegal and discriminatory use of polygraph testing to fire employees it suspects of being corrupt rather than affording them their right to due process in which they should be made to answer questions in a criminal probe by the police.

The law, not the government, should be cited as the basis for their firing, and in all the cases to-date, no law was ever cited as being broken for the firings of those state employees who failed the tests.
Meanwhile, billions of dollars are unaccounted for according to the Auditor General’s last two reports and no one is being polygraph tested! Hundreds of millions of dollars are going down the drain in highly questionable projects financed by loans taken by the government and no one is being polygraph tested! Millions from the Lotto Fund are not where they are supposed to be and no one is being polygraph tested!
Drug dealers and money launderers are roaming like free birds and no one is being polygraph tested! Serious accusations fly in the Robert Simels trial in New York and no one named or linked is being polygraph tested!
Surely, the politicization of polygraph testing is having a profound effect only on people who are selectively identified for such trauma, and while they lose sleep over how to feed their families, others more fortunate, including the President, may not be losing any sleep!
This is grossly unfair, even illegal, and demands international intervention immediately!
Emile Mervin

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