Where is the evidence?

Apr 23, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

This country is one long running soap opera. The drama has been running longer than Portia Faces Life, General Hospital and the Young and the Restless.
We have an entertaining country. The talk all this past two days has been about an alleged plot to assassinate the President – never mind so far not a shred of credible evidence has been produced to establish the validity of the allegations being made.
The only reason why the government has now come out and announced that it was aware of an alleged plot to assassinate the President was because a local reporter had done an interview with a man who is claiming that he was offered $7M to assassinate the President.
This is the only country in which such accusations are aired without a thorough interrogation of the person making the claim. The tragedy of this country is that there are thousands of Guyanese who are falling “hook, line and sinker” for that story. Others are saying that the government is attempting to divert attention from the problems in the country. There are thousands of Guyanese who also believe that nonsense about a political diversion.
The government obviously has not taken the alleged threat seriously. If the government was alarmed by the alleged threat, it obviously did not raise the alert level in the country. It certainly did not scale down on the President being around and about, because the newspapers have over the past weeks been reporting that the President has been out and about, all over Guyana. If the government felt that the President’s life would have been at risk, it would have advised him to restrict his movements.
If someone comes forward with an allegation of that nature, the first thing to do would be to look at the person’s character. Then one should question whether he has a motive for lying. The third thing to do is to assess whether the person has a problem with the person whom he is making the accusation against. The fourth thing is to determine that what is being said is being done rationally, and if there are any inconsistencies in the man’s story. Then there must be an attempt to find corroboration for what is being said.
It would be irresponsible for any media house to run the man’s story without first checking it out thoroughly. The police have obviously already been involved in investigating this matter. They should issue a statement indicating their preliminary findings. If the police were not called in or were not aware earlier of the allegation, then it needs to be ascertained where in the government the matter was being investigated and why.
There was once a firestorm in this country when a man went on public television and said that he was in the office of a former Minister of Home Affairs when a call came in, and orders were said to have been given to eliminate certain persons.
The story sent large sections of the country into an uproar. It eventually led to a commission of inquiry. When the phone records were checked, no so such call was ever received on the minister’s phone at the time the call was said to be made. It was all a bogus story. But it sent this country into a frenzy.
I am not dismissing the allegations which were made about a plot to kill the President. I am saying that the allegations should not be taken at face value. There have to be more investigations before a prima facie case can even be made out, much less before the public should start believing anything that was said. We await the next episode of Guyana’s latest soap opera.

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