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Look who is talking; Donald Ramotar
Dear Editor;
I wish to respond to Mr. Donald Ramotar who wrote that “government should not take away legally held weapons from the population”. Mr. Ramotar did not say who made this decision and when and where was it announced. But I know that the Coalition Government did not say that it will TAKE AWAY legally held weapons. Both President Granger and Minister Ramjattan stated that issuance to private citizens ought to be restricted.
The Coalition had granted an amnesty for persons in possession of illegal weapons to surrender them. However, the opposition PPP mocked the campaign. They did the same when the Government announced that sniffer dogs and horses would be deployed in the fight against crime. They laughed about “dogs and ponies” yet today we see mounted policemen are patrolling in areas at the back of Black Bush Polder as well as along our borders. A sniffer dog recently featured in the discovery of an illegal gun, which probably saved lives.
Mr. Ramotar’s ramblings were most embarrassing to his own party and that of the office of the opposition leader when he referred to the disappearance of 31 AK 47s rifles from army headquarters. That incident took place under the PPP’s watch. Could Mr. Ramotar say whether a Commission of Inquiry was set up to find out how the weapons went missing?
The people had elected the PPP to protect them and to make their lives safer. But under the Jagdeo/Ramotar administration not only were guns missing; there was a massive prison break which was the beginning of Guyana becoming a killing field. Some 500 persons were left dead in the wake of the crime spree that resulted. A sitting Minister and his family were assassinated but the PPP regime did not find it convenient to hold an inquiry into the assassination even though then President Jagdeo said that he knew who did the killings.
It was during that period that enforcers of a king-pin of the drug world, based in Enmore, were found in possession of high powered guns and when they were arrested, they quickly walked out of the police station, with the bag of guns, after the king pin identified himself as a security defender of the government. I am sure Mr. Ramotar, who likes to quote from Eusi Kwayana, would remember that the elder statesman had filed private criminal charges against the drug lord but the proceedings were discontinued by the government.
Mr. Ramotar would remember also that it was under the PPP’s watch that for the first time in Guyana’s history a death squad became active and there were many acts of extra-judicial killings (cold-blooded executions). A minister of Government was implicated. We still remember one instance where the weapon of a known criminal was upgraded and that the gunman killed a food vendor in a dispute over $20. I do not doubt that the PNC was involved in the events of 2002-2005, but the political responsibility for what took place must fall on the government of the day – the PPP for its incompetence in managing the situation and allowing an almost total breakdown of law and order.
J. Persaud
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