Latest update February 3rd, 2025 5:55 AM
May 21, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
On Tuesday afternoon, I was part of the trade union community that met with the same three members of the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) that we have dialogued with over the past consecutive years – Mr. Juan Edghill, Mr. John Willems, Mr. Carvil Duncan. We have never seen the other Commissioners.
As is customary throughout the hours of discussion, only Mr. Edghill would speak. The other two gentlemen never uttered a single word over the years we have met with them. This time, Mr. Duncan did speak when the representative of the Guyana Teachers ‘Union asked him a question about the stipend the TUC President receives. At this year’s confabulation, UNDP consultant, Lawrence Latchmansingh was in attendance. Most of the trade unions were represented including GAWU and NAACIE.
In his introductory remarks, Mr. Edghill spoke of the ERC’s function to ensure there isn’t racial prejudice in Guyana and he cited a recent episode of a group of Chinese being discriminated against by an East Indian store owner. He told his audience that the Chinese were asked to leave the premises by its owner. When Edghill’s presentation was over, I addressed the meeting and explained that the businessman made a complaint to the media about Bishop Edghill’s behaviour in his store. This aspect of the “Chinese drama” Mr. Edghill did not mention.
In his statement, the citizen alleged that Mr. Edghill used unkind words, was in an accusatory mood and he interpreted some choice of Edghill’s words to be threatening. But what was of interest to me was the presence of the ERC’s chairman in the man’s store. What was Edghill doing there?
The procedure for filing a complaint is straightforward and Edghill is one of the Commissioners that will sit in judgement. How then can Edghill get involved as he was in the person’s business place? That is of course assuming that Edghill was there in the first place. The businessman told me he will show me the surveillance camera of Edghill entering his store after the Chinese delegation left. The ERC has since summoned the businessman. At the forum with the labour movement, I requested Edghill to explain the circumstances in which he found himself on the business premises, he chose not to answer. Asked yesterday to describe the confrontation, he told me I must write him first. He refused to give a time frame for his response.
Now to the Commissioner of Police. I have applied the classification of elected dictatorship and fascism to the PPP Government and the Jagdeo presidency over the years, but especially since 2006. With each passing day, the fascist nature of this government puts this country in a category of dictatorship that the population never contemplated it would ever see. Guyana under the PPP Government has gone far into the deep recesses of authoritarian politics that should scare every citizen of this country and galvanize them to act immediately.
The latest manifestation of fascism is the release of a witness statement in a criminal matter that is being investigated. This is unheard of even in other fascist states. If the police are investigating opposition politician Peter Ramsaroop, the police file on the matter then becomes sensitive and classified documentation. How can the police release the statement of the virtual complainant to the public? This never happened before in this country.
Three aspects of this case should engender analytical scrutiny. First, the complaint came just one month after the young lady was in the company of President Jagdeo. Is there a connection? The answer is both yes and no. It depends on the perspective one uses. No, in the sense that the two episodes can be totally independent of each other. But one can argue also that why shouldn’t there be a connection in the equation, because after all the teenager knows the President well, and the accusation can damage the political career of an opposition figure especially in the ethnic context where race makes a huge contribution to electoral outcomes.
Secondly, the alacrity with which the police moved to work on the teenager’s complaint. This writer knows of dozens and dozens of criminal occurrences in which victims are still waiting for police activism. A jeweler’s wife got murdered in front of her husband. The police interviewed the man one month after.
Thirdly and most dangerously, the police publicized a police document that should only find itself in the open when the case goes to court. This is fascism. Let’s see what our sheepish, stupid, lost and hopeless opposition parties will do about elected dictatorship’s latest descent into the political latrine.
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