Opposition dares Granger to set up CoI into crime wave murders

Jan 28, 2018 News

Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo.

-Seeking to help craft terms of reference
Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo, yesterday dared President David Granger to fulfill the promise made to set up a commission of inquiry (CoI) into the spate of murders that occurred over a decade between 2000-2010.
On Friday, Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, said that the CoI is in keeping with a commitment made by President David Granger while he was in the opposition.
Jagdeo said that the President has not been shy in putting in place CoIs since being elected in 2015.
“Why not this one? It’s been almost three years and I dare him to do this,” Jagdeo noted.
Hundreds of persons died during the crime wave, including, the former Minister of Agriculture, Satyadeow ‘Sash’ Sawh. while Jagdeo was President.
While in control of Government, Jagdeo and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) resisted repeated calls to establish the CoI.
Jagdeo repeated calls to work with the President to establsih the terms of reference for the CoI because the PPP wants to look at the political operatives who were working with the drug dealers.
He continues to doubt the administration’s seriousness in establishing the CoI.
“They keep pulling this out of the hat this thing about this troubled period. Granger has been speaking about it a long time,” Jagdeo noted.
“Let’s have this CoI by all means, but let us have proper terms of reference and proper commissioners. Not the Paul Slowe type. Then we would see how politically-inspired many of those killings were,” Jagdeo pointed out.
He stated that the PPP plans to provide information to the CoI, maintaining that the killings were politically motivated and pointed to members who sit in the current Government as preventing the joint services from pursuing criminals during the period.
On Thursday, in his address to the members of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) at the opening ceremony of the Annual Officers’ Conference at Base Camp Ayanganna, the President said that his administration will ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice.
Harmon pointed out that there is no closure for the persons affected by the wanton murders which scarred Guyana.
“At some point in time, you have to bring closure to some things and I believe that is what the President is saying. We have to bring closure. Under the laws of Guyana, any crime where there is an unnatural death, the law requires that an inquest is held under the Coroner’s Inquest Act,” Harmon stated.
President Granger said that the previous administration never bothered to account to the nation for the hundreds of lives lost through criminal violence because it refused even to conduct inquests into the assassinations of its own Minister of Agriculture at La Bonne Intention.
Other untouched high profile probes include the death of Leon Fraser, Head of the Police Force’s Target Special Squad on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway; Vibert Inniss, Deputy Head of the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit in Buxton; and of the attempted assassination of Denis Hanomansingh, the Director of Public Prosecution in Kitty.
There were massacres in Agricola, Bagotstown-Eccles, Bartica, Bourda, Campbellville, Kitty, Lamaha Gardens, Lindo Creek, Lusignan and elsewhere.
The coalition Government believes that the crimes have not been explained and the memories have not been erased.

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