A WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY

Jul 06, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The decision of the government to hold a Commission of Inquiry into an alleged plot to assassinate the President is an insult to Guyana’s law enforcement agencies. It is also a waste of money.
A simple review of the investigation by a team of trained lawyers would have established whether a basis exists for having a new investigation. There is no need for millions of dollars to be spent on having a commission of inquiry which may end up with the same findings as the police investigation.
The government is asking the ministries to cut cost, yet it continues on this path of having unnecessary and extremely costly commission of inquiries, the reports of which are being kept as state secrets.
The Guyana Police Force would be justified in feeling insulted by the decision of the government to have a commission of inquiry into the allegations which the police have investigated and which they reportedly found to be without merit.
In other jurisdictions, such a decision would have so infuriated the top-brass of the Guyana Police Force that those concerned with the investigation, including the Crime Chief, would have stepped down because they would have felt so insulted that it would have made their positions untenable.
The government of Guyana must ask itself why it has taken this unusual step. It has not offered to the public any shred of evidence that the investigation was tainted. It should proceed on the basis that this is a possibility because this would suggest that the military-dominated political top brass has issues with the Guyana Police Force.
The army has conducted its own investigations, which are called Board of Inquiries into certain matters. And the government has not, in any of those instances, called for a CoI into those investigations. But it has the temerity to insult the Guyana Police Force by calling for a CoI in an investigation which hardly excited the public.
The government has been praising the work of the police’s crime sleuths ever since there was a change in government. The government has been relaying information about reduction in certain crimes. So if the police are so competent in investigating these matters, why question their competence in relation to the alleged plot to assassinate the President?
What needs to be questioned is the fact that if the police investigations found that the allegations were malicious, why was the person not charged. If the person who it is claimed maliciously claimed that someone offered him money to do something to the President is not telling the truth, then that person has wasted the time of the police. That person should be charged and hauled before the courts.
A determination as to why this has not happened does not require a Commission of Inquiry. It requires a review of the investigation. And the Guyana Police Force has a competent legal adviser who can do this.
The Minister of Public Security has so far not said anything about this matter. It needs to be asked whether he was part of the decision to have a CoI. If he did then, he will have to explain to the Guyana Police Force why he has taken such an unusual decision which could see him having to exercise ministerial responsibility over a Force which is going to be further demoralized by this unusual and perverse decision.
The investigators of the allegation of a plot of harm to the President are now going to be put under investigation. The crime sleuths of the Criminal Investigation Department will have to appear under oath and give evidence about their investigation. They are going to be humiliated in the eyes of the public
These officers deserve to be told the basis for a CoI being launched.
This is the most ridiculous state of affairs ever to confront the CID in recent memory. How more absurd can things become in the rotten state of Guyana?

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