People’s National Congress Reform Column

Sep 23, 2012 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

---

Clement Rohee has failed our drug strategy, failed our public security, and failed our human safety.
The People’s National Congress Reform has blamed Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee’s ineffectual drug strategy and poor public security performance for the low level of human safety in Guyana today. Several persons, including police and counter-narcotics officers, have been ‘executed’ as a result of narco-trafficking.
Detective Corporal Jirbahan Dianand is the most recent victim of Ministerial incompetence resulting from the non-implementation of an effective counter-narcotics strategy. Dianand was found dead in his car at Jackson Creek, in the East Berbice-Corentyne Region, on Friday 14th September. The policeman, who was shot twice to his head at close range, was credited with conducting several cocaine busts in an area known for the thriving narco-trafficking business across the Guyana-Suriname border.
The PNCR also pointed out that this was not the first occasion on which police officers were killed while performing their duty in this notorious contraband zone. Police Assistant Superintendent Ivelaw Murray and Constable Kelvin Shepherd were both murdered on 4th July, 2010 at the Springlands Police Station not very far away.
The Police Force at that time dishonestly attempted to portray the execution of two of their own officers as a ‘murder-suicide.’ The officers were known to have threatened the rampant Guyana-Suriname narco-trafficking business.
Clement Rohee has been serving as Minister of Home Affairs for six years, having been appointed on 9th September, 2006. He inherited Guyana’s third counter-narcotics plan – the five-year National Drug Strategy Master Plan 2005-2009 – from his predecessor, Gail Teixeira. Rohee, however, failed to implement the essential elements of that Plan, allowing it to expire nearly three years ago.
The PNCR persistently criticised Rohee’s failure to implement the plan and to enforce an effective counter-narcotics strategy. Local criticisms have been reinforced repeatedly by foreign criticisms contained in the annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Reports issued by the US Department of State.
The People’s Progressive Party Civic administration has also failed to allow the establishment of a US Drug Enforcement Administration office on Guyana’s territory.
Responding to foreign and local public pressure, Rohee announced on 14th January, 2011 that “arrangements have commenced for the formulation of a new five-year Drug Strategy Master Plan.” Nothing seems to have been done. He repeated the tale, in April 2011, that “preparations have already begun as regards formulating a successor 2011-2015 Drug Strategy Master Plan, and that the Government is committed to continuing with its ‘aggressive posture’ as regards counter narcotic activities”. Still nothing seems to have been done.
Rohee brazenly repeated the tale, making an almost identical announcement 20 months later on 17th September, 2012. Speaking at the opening ceremony of a counter-narcotics investigation training course at Police Headquarters, Georgetown, Rohee baldly stated that “a new Drug Strategy Master Plan is being crafted by the government”.
PNCR leader Brigadier David Granger, disregarding these promises, had issued a public call last year for the People’s Progressive Party Civic administration to conduct a judicial enquiry into all aspects of the drug trade. This was necessary since it was clear that Clement Rohee was severely challenged in staunching the flow of drugs, particularly cocaine, into this country.
Granger made specific reference to the huge volume of cocaine entering Guyana, pointing particularly to the discovery of a major narco-aerodrome in December 2007. That illegal airstrip, located 130 km upriver from Orealla on the Corentyne River, in the same East Berbice-Corentyne Region, was 1,100 m long and 35 m wide. The Let 410 UVP-E turboprop airplane, which was found partially burnt on the illegal strip, had a payload of 1,615 kg of cocaine and a range of over 1,300 km, enabling it to land on almost any airstrip in Guyana.
Guyanese importers, convinced that they would not be detected or punished, built their own airstrips to facilitate their trade.
Rohee, despite this evidence, said that the ‘judicial inquiry’ that Granger called for “makes no sense” in light of government’s approach to the crime. The result has been that trafficking has escalated under Rohee’s watch.
Rohee, clearly – throughout his troubled six-year tenure as Minister in that portfolio from September 2006 to September 2012 – has demonstrated that he is not the right man to wage a war on drugs.  Despite the prevalence of this crime, Rohee has failed to introduce a current, comprehensive counter-narcotics strategy to prevent illegal drugs from entering the country.
He has failed to stop the drug-related executions, even of his own police officers.
Rohee must be held accountable. He must be made to accept responsibility for the failure of the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit and the Guyana Police Force Narcotics Unit to take effective action against the dangerous narco-trade.
That is why the National Assembly expressed its complete lack of confidence in the ability of the Minister of Home Affairs to discharge his responsibility for public security. That is why the National Assembly has called on President Donald Ramotar to immediately revoke Rohee’s appointment as a Minister of the government.

---

---