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‘What goes around comes around’

Mar 04, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Guyanese have a saying: “What goes around comes around?”
During the protests in Linden, in 2012, three persons were killed. APNU and the AFC immediately demanded, that the then Minister of Home Affairs should accept ministerial responsibility for the tragedy and should resign. They did not wait on the COI to complete its report. The then opposition parties demanded that the Minister should resign.
APNU and the AFC were not waiting on any report. As far as they were concerned, ministerial responsibility meant that a minister had to accept responsibility for the actions of those departments which fell under him or her. The Guyana Police Force was the political responsibility of the then Minister of Home Affairs and the AFC and APNU called for the Minister’s head.
They even went as far as passing a motion of no-confidence in him. At one stage he was prevented from speaking in the National Assembly for a short while until the Courts made some rulings, after constitutional motions were filed.
What goes around comes around. There was a terrible tragedy at the Georgetown Prisons yesterday. Sixteen persons died as a result. Who is going to take ministerial responsibility and resign?
What will be the excuse this time for not resigning? After all, both the AFC and APNU were insisting in the case of the Linden incident that the then Minister of Home Affairs held ministerial responsibility and should resign.
The wrong things you do come back to haunt you, and this latest tragedy is a case of the wrong that was done to Rohee coming back to haunt the AFC and APNU.
The government has announced a three-person panel to investigate the incident. It is the right thing to do. Culpability, including any ministerial responsibility should, unlike what was done in the past, await the outcome of the report of that panel.
The government has acted swiftly. It has appointed an investigative panel. It should have appointed a Commission of Inquiry (COI) since Commissions of Inquiry have powers to subpoena witnesses. But a three-person panel is a far superior arrangement to the Board of Inquiry which has been established to examine the veracity of allegations made in the media against a senior police officer and against CANU.
What exactly is this Board of Inquiry? This is a military-style inquiry which is normally used to undertake probes within the military. It is unsuited for the type of investigation that is needed into the allegations made. It is unfortunate that the government is moving in this direction. It should not have appointed anything. The decision to have a Board of Inquiry sets a bad precedent. It means that any Tom, Dick or Harry can step forward and raise an allegation against persons in the government which would then be forced to mount a Board of Inquiry.
Before any inquiry or investigation was launched, it first needed to be established that a prima facie case had been made out. Once this did not happen, there should not have been any inquiry, period.
It is ridiculous for the Board of Inquiry to be asked to investigate the veracity of the allegations. What allegations? The allegations made are general. There are no specifics provided. It is like charging a man for speeding without saying when or where he was speeding. Without the specifics, a prima face case cannot be made out. There should have been no Board of Inquiry.
This is the not the first Board of Inquiry that has been announced. When the army sergeant was killed after carrying out surveillance on the home of Winston Brassington, it was announced that a Board of Inquiry was being launched into the matter. The public has heard nothing about the outcome of that inquiry.
Perhaps it will be the same with the matter involving the allegations against the policeman and CANU. Perhaps, it is all an internal investigation, the findings of which the public will never be privy.

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