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GINA ‘distasteful’ campaign ad…Robust defence to be mounted to ensure truth is told- Granger
“A lot of nonsense is being said and much of that is being scrapped in order to malign the PNC [People National Congress] Reform and we won’t have any of it so our lawyers are working and we are going to mount a robust defence to ensure that the truth is told.”
Leader of the PNC/R David Granger
This is the assertion of Opposition Leader retired Brig. David Granger as he spoke to the recent developments with regard to the apparent smear campaign in which the Government Information News Agency (GINA) placed advertisements aimed at criticizing the Party with respect to Dr. Walter Rodney’s Commission of Inquiry (COI).
Attorney General Anil Nandlall had commented on the ads, calling them “distasteful”. Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon said he didn’t share the AG’s view and posited that GINA exercised its autonomy and sought to publicize the happenings of the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry for those who didn’t hear it on the news, read it online, in the newspapers, or saw the live streaming.
According to Granger, the Party had anticipated the behaviour of the GINA and the PPP/C Administration during the Walter Rodney COI.
“As you know, the Commission was established in February and given an unrealistic deadline of four months, which means that in about a month’s time it will expire. I had written to both President Donald Ramotar, and Sir. Richard Cheltenham, Chairman of the Commission, about our concerns, particularly in terms of reference number four and we could not cooperate with the Commission under those terms, although we said we would participate in order to protect our Party’s reputation and its interest and we have been doing that,” said Granger.
Granger said that his Party called upon the COI itself and not the President or the PPP/C Administration to pursue the truth. He stressed, “we have nothing to hide and were the truth to be told, the people of Guyana would understand better how Dr. Rodney came to be in possession of a certain device in a brown paper bag, why he agreed to have it tested at a certain place at the dead of night, and what he intended to do with that device because a walkie talkie doesn’t speak to itself.”
The PNC/R leader said that his Party would like to know the truth. “We are not jumping to conclusions and the government has tried to make this a political Commission of Inquiry and we have already seen the relaxation of certain rules of evidence, so that people are getting up and talking about their dreams and premonitions and their guesses. They heard somebody who said something about an accident occurring.”
Granger outlined that attention should be placed on how Rodney was killed and not on hearsay and premonitions. “So far we have had four witnesses in two months and we don’t know anymore about the circumstances under which Dr. Walter Rodney was killed. We would like to get an answer to that and we will support any aspect of the Inquiry which helps the public to get the truth about Dr. Rodney’s death,” he noted.
Also speaking on the issue was PNC/R youth representative, James Bond, who argued that in the COI the fourth and fifth hand representations have led Guyanese down a road of “fanciful imaginations” away from the truth and understanding of the demise of Rodney.
He said further that PPP “propaganda machinery becomes serious when a senior member of Cabinet comments and calls it distasteful… that is the state we have reached in terms of the propaganda being spewed from the PPP/C. Then the Cabinet Secretary would seek to say that ‘he ain’t speaking for me’… that shows that the propaganda machinery is almost comical.”
According to Bond, we “are cognizant of their machinations which are not new by the way but we believe in the power of the Guyanese people to discern between fact and fiction and downright lies. We have some serious concerns; hearsay evidence is being allowed to be banded about not only in the Commission but via the GINA and Chronicle and other state media as to what is really going on the Walter Rodney COI.”
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