The PPPC should cease its idle threats

Apr 21, 2018 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The PPPC must discontinue this foolish practice of issuing idle threats against the government. It should not, for example, be threatening legal action against the government for the manner in which the government has dealt with the signing bonus. It should take the legal action it says it is contemplating. The PPPC will continue to look absurd unless it does what it is threatening to do.
The PPPC has had too many start and stops in responding to APNU+AFC violations. The PPPC’s promised non-cooperation with the government has fizzled. It has been ineffective. Holding up placards in parliament and picketing the President whenever he is in a PPPC stronghold is not gaining any political tractions. Meanwhile, the legal challenge to the appointment of the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission is languishing in the court system.
The PPPC lost a wonderful opportunity to create a national alliance against this appointment. The PPPC’s leadership is so insecure that when golden opportunities present themselves for broad-based alliances in defence of human rights, the PPPC fails to capitalize.
Today, it is the PPPC, which is being victimized. Tomorrow it will be the entire nation. This is how things start to go wrong with authoritarian governments. People are worried as to whether the government will violate their rights and that of their children. Right-minded Guyanese will support a broad-based alliance, which will fight to protect the rights of citizens. The PPPC however has failed to forge partnerships in combatting the repression of the APNU +AFC.
The PPPC believes that it is being subjected to political witch-hunting and victimization. It feels that the Special Organized Crime Unit is leading a politically inspired charge against its party and professionals that served within its government.
The latest politically-inspired action against the PPPC are the charges of misconduct leveled against former Finance Minister Ashni Singh and Winston Brassington. They are before the court on charges of misconduct, a common law charge, which is as archaic as sedition.
The PPPC has to plan carefully a strategy to prevent what it believes is the continued vendetta against the party and the rights of its members. The PPPC should not be making idle threats. It has failed to develop a plan to bring the government to account for its politically inspired charges against members of the PPPC and persons associated with it when it was in government.
The PPPC is not making the best use of peaceful and lawful means of protest, including what the PPPC was good at in the pre-1992 days, isolating the government.
The PPPC has had a good record in the past of internationalizing its concerns. It should seek to utilize this experience once again in resisting what it believes is a political witch-hunt in a local government election year.
The PPPC has enough grounds to file a complaint before the United Nations Human Rights Council against the Special Organized Crime Unit. The Council is allowed to take complaints from non-governmental organizations. The PPPC should immediately begin preparing a petition to lay before the Commission.
If the PPPC feels also that it has grounds to take action against any Minister of the Government for unlawful actions or misconduct, it should do so rather than threaten to do so. The PPPC is not scaring anyone with idle threats. The objective of the PPP should not be to frighten anyone but to demonstrate that it is prepared to respond, through legal means, to the government’s excesses.
If the PPPC believes that it can file charges against any government Minister it should do so but it should not do to others what has been done to it. It should not violate the rights of any government official.
The Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU), in the eyes of the PPPC, is being used to carry out this vendetta. The SOCU was established by the PPPC to fight organized crime. However, it seems to be concerned with going after PPPC personnel, rather than tackle those who have benefitted from drug smuggling and money laundering.
A British advisor is working for the SOCU. The PPPC should alert the British government about what it believes to be the perversion of the role of SOCU and its employment for witch-hunting political opponents of the government.
The PPPC can ask the British government to halt its support for security sector reform until such time as these charges against SOCU are investigated. It can raise a lobby within the United Kingdom to press the British government to revisit its support for support for SOCU.
The PPPC has the option of mobilizing domestic, regional and international support against what it sees as a witch-hunt. Many Caribbean lawyers are willing to come to Guyana, as Maurice Bishop did, during the trials of Arnold Rampersaud, falsely accused of treason.
Legal and political action is always best backed by broad-based political mobilization in defence of human rights. But the PPPC leadership is small-minded and myopic. . The PPPC has an opportunity to work with civil society to establish a credible human rights watchdog committee. This committee should be broad-based and should aim at defending human rights victims of the regime. It should mobilize funds and support for this defence.

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