Opposition coalition shocked at Ramotar’s statements on Crum-Ewing

Mar 27, 2015 News

A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Coalition has expressed shock at recent statements made by President Donald Ramotar, with regards to murdered anti-government protestor Courtney Crum-Ewing.

President Donald Ramotar

The President had said that Crum-Ewing was more of a nuisance than a threat to his ruling People’s Progressive Party Civic, likening him to the slain criminal Linden ‘Blackie’ London.
Ramotar, who made the statements during an address to a section of the West Berbice business community, had accused Crum-Ewing of spewing racist comments on his Facebook account.
But the APNU+AFC coalition in a statement released to the media yesterday said that the President’s remarks “bear all the hallmarks of inciteful language designed to create an atmosphere of anxiety and unease”.
Crum-Ewing was gunned down on March 10 while using his bull horn to urge residents of Diamond, East Bank Demerara to vote out the ruling PPP/C at the upcoming General Elections slated for May 11.
Although the police have not established a motive for his killing, there are many who believe that Crum-Ewing’s murder had to do with his activism.
The coalition attacked the remarks of the President, claiming that “Guyana has discovered new trenches of indecency when the Head of State hides behind the cloak of immunity and uses the protection of the Presidential Office to maliciously attack and slander a deceased patriot by calling him a criminal and a nuisance”.
“Courtney Crum-Ewing, during his lifetime protested against a caste system which

Courtney Crum-Ewing

was proudly enunciated by the Attorney General in a recorded telephone conversation and which concept was never disputed or refuted by the President, but merely considered contextually misplaced,” the APNU+AFC said.
It added that after Crum-Ewing’s death, the Head of State who “could find no voice during the lifetime of Crum-Ewing to condemn his Attorney General’s endorsement of the caste system in a multi-ethnic society, can only now in his death, find it possible to call him a criminal and a nuisance”.
The coalition referred to the words of the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I, during his 1963 address to the United Nations General Assembly and which were repeated in song by the legendary Bob Marley in the 1970s.
“The philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior (must be) permanently discredited and abandoned.”
The President had also suggested that Crum-Ewing was a pawn used by the opposition coalition for their own aims.
“If his death was political as they are saying, well I would say that he was a pawn that was sacrificed for their own political ends, because we certainly don’t have anything to gain by that type of activity,” Ramotar stated.
“Which government will want to do something like that, to destabilize itself?” Ramotar asked.
But while the President’s statements came as a shock to the coalition as a whole, it did not come as a surprise to some in the opposition.
Cathy Hughes of the coalition, in an invited comment, had told this newspaper that the President’s remarks were not unexpected.
“It was true to form,” she said.
So far the police have not indicated that they have any evidence to support the President’s claim.
APNU+AFC repeated its call for the Guyanese populace not to be provoked and to remain calm.
“Use the power of your vote to exorcise Guyana of this Executive hatefulness and divisiveness.
Only the ballot can stop the bullet.”