It is time the PPP shut up

Jan 13, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
In response to your news article, “Carifesta Avenue triple deaths…President will not interfere in any police, army investigations,” (KN, January12, 2016), and featuring former Attorney-General, Anil Nandlall criticizing the President for ruling out a full probe, permit me a few salient observations. First, whether the President erred or was not properly quoted, the fact is that because lives were lost in what can best be described as a botched surveillance, there ought to be a full scale investigation to determine the facts in order to provide closure to the surviving relatives and to identify measures to prevent a recurrence.
The President should have simply deferred all questions of a probe to the Police Commissioner who has direct responsibility for head of SOCU, Assistant Police Commissioner, Lt. Col. Sydney James and leave it at that. The more government officials try to address or defend this incident, the more it looks politically-inspired. Second, the PPP and its supporting cast of opinion shapers and sharers want nothing more than to make this a political hot topic of a failed political attempt by the coalition government to get at former NICIL Executive Director, Winston Brassington, with intelligence operatives somehow getting their information mixed up on which house they were supposed to be observing.
But a quick reality check will show this makes no sense since the coalition retained Brassington’s service after May 11 and had seven months to get all the information it wanted, including obtaining a court-issued search warrant of his home, and still did not take any such action. Brassington also left Guyana shortly after the coalition government sent him on leave a couple of days before Christmas, and SOCU had to know this, thereby making it illogical for any operative to be monitoring his house, since he and all his children were also reportedly out of the country.
Third, to those who are pushing the notion that SOCU was being used as a political weapon by the coalition, let the records show that it was the PPP regime, which launched SOCU and appointed former GDF Lt. Col. Sydney James to the rank of Assistant Police Commissioner and head of SOCU. James, it should be recalled, appeared as a witness in the Rodney COI and provided seemingly damaging information against the then PNC regime and its then national security apparatus.
Whether that appointment was a form of reward for his testimony is not clear, but SOCU’s broad mandate, according to the PPP regime, was to focus on money laundering and financing of terrorist activities. Ironically, these were exactly what the Financial Intelligence Unit, headed by Paul Geer was supposed to be doing.
As if that redundancy was not questionable, SOCU, which was supposed to have its own trained specialists, was also established as part of the police force, which already had a Major Crimes Unit. So what really was the PPP’s motivation here, if not political? This brings me to the fourth point: Did SOCU know or suspect Brassington or his neighbor, Charles Ramson, Jr. to be engaged in money laundering or terrorist financing activities, hence the need for surveillance of either or both men’s neighboring homes?
It might be instructive to note, in passing, that on October29, 2014, SOCU made its first money laundering bust when a Bulgarian national was caught at CJIA with over US$45,000 in cash. The man was represented by Charles Ramson Jr. and was allowed to leave Guyana. We never heard or read anything more about that money laundering story despite all the political posturing about money laundering in Guyana, but observers are now wondering whether Ramson’s relatives were not being pursued by SOCU operatives as a result of a mix up, after all, but premeditatedly to detect and prevent the possible movements of vital documents related to NICIL. More pointedly, observers are wondering if NICIL, which the coalition wants to be further audited, was involved in money laundering and documents were being ducked to hide this.
It should be interesting to note also the botched exercise took place at a time when Ramson and Brassington, both neighbors and with close ties to the PPP, were out of Guyana around the same time, leading some to wonder whether SOCU was on to some sort of shenanigan, but Sergeant Pyle simply botched the exercise. In conclusion, the coalition would be wise to shut the hell up and let Assist Police Commissioner, Sydney James or his boss address this matter in a full frontal manner, because it is obvious that there had to be something of interest or importance for SOCU to be so diligently engaged in surveillance activities, and if the nation is made aware of the rationale, it could answer a ton of questions and end speculation about political motives.
By the way, where was Anil Nandlall’s call for a Commission of Inquiry into the crime spree era that claimed over 400 lives on Jagdeo’s watch or the collapse of Clico (Guyana) that cost Guyanese US$34M and Jagdeo’s refusal to let Parliament investigate the fiasco? Some politicians just don’t know when to shut the hell up!
Emile Mervin

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