Fingering the PPP for an act of arson

Nov 03, 2018 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Guyanese are now faced with the revival of the Burnham era not by the PNC but with the Alliance for Change, a political party in whom the electorate had placed their trust and confidence to make ‘the right turn’ away from corruption, cronyism, racial discrimination and vendetta politics.
The AFC will bring in a new political culture, which will herald peace and harmony among Guyanese but since coalescing, it has continued to make all the wrong turns!
Moreover, whatever minuscule shred of respectability had remained in the AFC is now gone forever and there is not even a glimmer of hope that this can be regained. The curse is now complete and the AFC is ‘dead meat’.
But what is ironic is the fact that the same man who prognosticated that the AFC will be ‘dead meat’ if it coalesced with the APNU is the same man who is instrumental in fulfilling his own prophecy!
I had written to the media about the veiled threats issued by the Minister of Public Security, Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan, on a TV station in Berbice where he claimed on the ‘Alliance on the Move’ programme that PPP supporters were intimidating people from putting their names on the AFC’s candidate list.
He further said that Guyana Police Force will be called in to deal with these PPP supporters. However, it was later found that people were tricked into signing the AFC’s backers’ lists at Whim/Bloomfield, 51/Good Hope, and many other LAAs. This matter was subjected to a High Court hearing and the Public Security Minister again made a statement on television that the party will deal with the person who filed that petition. That person was Safraz Beekam, a PPP candidate from the Whim Bloomfield LAA.
Unfortunately, the fact that the case went in favour of the AFC did nothing to allay the insecurity of the AFC. It was time for vendetta politics and to promote a campaign to get voters’ sympathy and to up its smear campaign against the PPP. This is the only way it can swing some votes in its favour.
It must be noted that the AFC was thrown into the deep by the APNU and it is now a ‘make or break’ situation. The AFC must deliver votes to retain its place in the Coalition, failing which it will be disgraced and unceremoniously kicked out of the partnership and mark the end of the Cummingsburg Accord as it is.
It must be noted that the AFC got a bigger share of the pie than it should have gotten and that must now be rectified by the APNU.
Fortunately, the melodrama now playing at Whim will not serve the purpose intended. The hasty press release by the AFC states that, ‘The AFC views this as a terror attack both on Ms. Permaul and the lives of her children and father and her home. This act is consistent with the old political tactics of fear which is resorted to by certain political entities’ clearly implicates the People’s Progressive Party.
“Why will the AFC go to such a length when the police had not even initiated an investigation into the alleged arson?”
It is also too suspicious when it is considered that it was the alleged victim who actually posed as a GECOM staff and tricked Beekam to sign the backers form and it was Beekam, a PPP candidate, who filed the petition in the High Court.
The AFC must understand that the accusation it is now making against the PPP marks a period when Nagamootoo and Ramjattan were executive members of the PPP. Therefore, if they are correct in their conclusion, then there should be a commission of inquiry wherein these two former PPP stalwarts must testify to these allegedly nefarious criminal activities.
Furthermore, they are now accountable to the Guyanese people to give examples of these ‘acts of terrorism’ alluded to in the press release. In addition, it can also be assumed that these two former PPP members can now be deemed to be experts in the use of ‘threats and terror’ and therefore have the competence and the power (one is the prime Minister and one is the Public Security Minister) to unleash these as is evidenced by Ramjattan’s threat to ‘fix’ Beekam.
Mr. Nagamootoo and Ramjattan should focus on the trickery, which is now being perpetrated within the AFC against its own members. At the 51/Good Hope LAA, a pastor who is an AFC member filled out a backers form with 30 names as the constituency candidate but his Form 13 was scrapped and his backers list was attached to the Form 13 of a woman who was holidaying overseas and came into the country after nomination was long closed.
The pastor has since engaged the leaders of the party but was told that it was GECOM’s ‘error’. It is sad and disappointing that the AFC has no qualms and moral scruples and would resort to even trick and deceive its own!
No doubt the AFC seems to have now perfected the art of deceit and trickery!
Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf

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