Rohee suggests AFC “set-up” President Ramotar

Jan 07, 2015 News

The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is suggesting that the Alliance For Change (AFC) planted persons to sit in at the meeting held late last year in Aishalton to provoke President Donald Ramotar.

AFC Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan

PPP General Secretary, Clement Rohee

President Donald Ramotar

This is what PPP General Secretary, Clement Rohee, indicated yesterday as he hosted the Party’s weekly press conference at Freedom House.
Rohee was at the time mounting a defence for the President’s response to a man who heckled him.
A week ago, a recording surfaced of the meeting at which the President had delivered a speech in Aishalton. During the recording, Ramotar was heard saying that former President Bharrat Jagdeo would not have allowed certain statements to pass without retaliation.
This came out as the man questioned the former President’s record in office while Ramotar was busy attacking the political opposition.
The President was heard saying “They don’t have a record to be proud of; they don’t have a history that they can be proud of. That is why they don’t like history and they don’t like to hear about the past.”
The man retorted, “Yea, yea, like Jagdeo.”
“You don’t know anything about Jagdeo; if he bin hay he mighta slap yuh, coz yuh stupid,” the President is heard saying on an audio recording released to the media by a villager.
Yesterday Rohee told the media that the entire incident may have very well been a set-up by AFC.
“The PPP would not be surprised if the Aishalton incident turns out to be a set-up by a certain parliamentary political party,” said Rohee.
He qualified which political party he was speaking of when he said “a member of this particular party made an outrageous claim to the effect that the PPP wanted to buy-off certain Parliamentarians.”
Rohee said as well that his party was not surprised that the political opposition and “the opposition media have played up and overplayed the anti-Ramotar and anti-PPP sentiments.”
He said definitively that there was an obvious objective to jeopardize the PPP’s relationship with Amerindian people.
Rohee said that his Party “views concerns over the statement purported to have been made by the President at Aishalton as an attempt to sow discord, division and mischief among our Amerindian brothers and sisters.”
The General Secretary went on to state the “good” things that the PPP has done for Amerindians. “Under the PPP/C government Amerindian development has advanced by leaps and bounds.
In all areas of Amerindian life, Guyanese can bear witness to the actions and results of the PPP/C developmental programmes for our Amerindian brothers and sisters.
In education, health, village development, Amerindian inclusion in policy development and implementation on the records, the PPP/C administrations are exemplary.”
Rohee said that the aforementioned developments are in stark contrast to “the lives they lived under the PNC (People’s National Congress) when Amerindians were scorned upon and made mere pawns in the politics of the PNC.”
But when asked if the fact that the PPP developed some Amerindian communities should mean that the President can speak to Amerindians in a derogatory manner, Rohee failed to give a clear answer.
He said “look, the Opposition obviously pounced upon this thing because they see it as something they can use politically, so they are seeking to milk it as much as they can in order to embarrass the government and the President…We are not upset about what they said, but we have a right to say our part.”
Rohee said too that “the PPP has a proud record of working to ensure that our Amerindian brothers and sisters benefit from accelerated development and this has developed to the point where today, the PPP stands out as the Party with the largest and fastest growing Amerindian support”.