AG recalls “dark time” of killings and lawlessness during no-confidence debate

Dec 22, 2018 News

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The APNU+AFC Government has accomplished a lot during its relatively short time in office. It has already begun “to remove the muck of narcotics trafficking, corruption and other serious offences, to clean our economy of the dirty money that characterized those twenty- three years.”
So said Attorney General, Basil Williams, as he debated the no-confidence brought against his government by Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo.
Williams boasted of such “accomplishments” after he presented a detailed description of the “dark time” that the people of Guyana endured under the rule of the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic.
Williams told the House that the no-confidence motion is one of the most “misconceived, ill-timed, malicious, Grinch-like motions ever.”
Quoting Martin Carter’s “This is the dark time my love,” the Attorney General said that the years between 2001 and 2008 were akin to a theatre of war, on the lower East Coast of Demerara and Georgetown. The rule of law lost its way and was replaced by the Law of the Jungle.

He said that it was a period of extra judicial killings by death squads, black clothes squads, civilian hit squads which allegedly operated under the direction of the then Government figure, Phantom squad and a squad which was the product of the merger of the Phantom squad and an outlaw figure to whom the Government abdicated its responsibility for the Public Security of the State.
According to Williams, in this Dark Age, the “killing fields” flourished. “This spectre of death was never seen before in Guyana and Caricom. It was unprecedented. Hundreds of sons, brothers and fathers were senselessly cut down and killed in this ‘festival of guns and carnival of misery”.
The Attorney General said that people disappeared from their loved ones and vanished from the face of the earth after being taken into the custody of the Black Clothes Squad.
He cited the cases of Franz Britton Wills and Danyele Jones. Williams said that in the case of Wills, the Inter-America Human Rights Court heard the case and the Government refused to submit to the Court’s jurisdiction and denounced Guyana’s membership to the convention to enable them to so do.
Further, Williams said that many young people were stereotyped and dragged before the Courts to face trumped-up charges of murder, some with multiple counts. He said that young people “largely of one ethnicity, were between the ages of 14 and 17. All were committed to stand trial in the High Court at the Criminal Assizes, at Georgetown about five years later, resulting in them spending the quality years of their life, in jail with hardened criminals.
“All of these young persons were eventually freed after Jury trials, in a triumph of the Rule of Law.”
Williams continued, “In this dismal, abysmal period we had a broken Judiciary, a dictatorship of the Judiciary. The then Acting Chancellor decided to also act as Chief Justice and was only stopped by the decision of one of his High Court Judges order.
“But this happened after the then Government removed the built-in check and balance that divided the administration of the duties and functions of the Supreme Court between the Chancellor and Chief Justice.”
He said that as a consequence, all the duties and functions of the office of Chief Justice were transferred to the Chancellor, giving him absolute and dictatorial powers to ride roughshod over the judicial system.
“This give him power to appoint who presided over any matter before the Courts from the Magistracy to the Court of Appeal and sat on appeal of such matters when they went before the Court of Appeal.
“Despite being rejected by successive Leaders of the Opposition, the then Government continued to put him up for the office of Chancellor, resulting in the positions of the Chancellor and Chief Justice being acting positions for well over a decade.”
Williams told the House that the APNU+AFC government inherited a broken system where the judiciary had no fundamental independence and had to go cap-in-hand to the Government to seek salaries and benefits for the Judges.
The Attorney General boasted that it was the APNU+AFC Government which, among its first acts, restored the Independence of the Judiciary by passing Legislation to empower them to determine their own budget without any direction from the Government. Williams dubbed this, “a triumph for the Rule of Law.”
He said that the APNU+AFC Government, in an attempt to end the acting in both offices of Chancellor and Chief Justice, put before the now Leader of the Opposition the names of the persons currently occupying these positions, with the expressed intention to confirm them as Chancellor and Chief Justice and he refused, thus continuing the trend he started as President.
Williams vowed that the Government will continue its work to restore the independence of the Judiciary in Guyana.
Returning to his chronicle of the “dark time,” Williams said that another decadent feature of this period was the killing of women when they were exercising their constitutional rights of freedom of expression, assembly and to protection under the law.
Williams recalled that in April 2001, Donna Mc Kinnon was killed while protesting outside Freedom House in Robb Street. He said that just six years later, in September 2007 Donna Herod was shot dead by the Police as she collected her child from the Primary School in Buxton; and, Vanessa Thomas who was killed in the Lusignan massacre in January 2008.
Williams said that in the face of all these unexplained killings, or deaths, no Coroner’s Inquest was undertaken or initiated by the State. He said that an opposition lawyer had to surprise the Court with applications for Writs of Mandamus to compel the Chief Magistrate and other Magistrates who are also Coroners under the law for the Magisterial Districts where they presided, to hold Coroner’s Inquest.
The Attorney General said that as a result of those applications, there were inquests into the execution of Shaka Blair who, he said, was killed in his bed by the Black Clothes Squad.
Further, Williams told the House that Donna Mc Kinnon’s inquest was never heard, though the High Court ordered it, and that the inquest in Donna Herod started but, “lost its way.”
According to Williams, efforts were made to intimidate Magistrates conducting Coroner’s Inquests. “And this recourse waned though it served the useful purpose of notice to police ranks that they could not do their dastardly acts and not end up before the Courts to be cross-examined on their actions.
“The Black Clothes Squad was dismantled under severe pressure from the opposition and its lawyer.”
Williams told the House that what he described made Guyana a failed state.
“We are preparing our economy to receive clean money from our Oil and Gas, and Green State sectors, and indeed the entire economy.”
Williams continued, “Where the rule of law is ensconced, businesses thrive as investors recognize that Guyana is a place to do business in. The Guyanese people are seeing a sea change and wish us to continue on this path to the good life for all Guyanese.”

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