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President Ali has zero interest in police reform and accountability

Aug 17, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,

For all the lip service paid by the President, Vice President and their cronies about One Guyana, it appears that the PPP continues to have very little interest in improving accountability, transparency and impartiality in the Guyana Police Force. Instead, they are happy with the status quo, that is, using the police force by omission and commission to pursue political objectives.

This is nothing new the PPP is doing what the PNC once did. The problem is with the police force. There has hardly been an independent Commissioner of Police- all have been politically-compromised resulting from political affiliation and a desire to maintain the perks that comes with the office and its pension at the expense of the common public good.

The PPP’s track record on police reform attests to this.  In 2009 during one of the most violent periods in Guyana, the British offered the then PPP Government 4.9m pounds sterling in grant financing (meaning Guyana did not have to repay) to reform the GPF, Clement Rohee was Minister at the time. What decision did the Cabinet make regarding this offer? They refused it saying Guyana could not manage this amount of money and that the British would’ve had too much influence in managing the project. If this is contradictory, then perhaps Mr. Rohee and Vice President Jagdeo, the latter who was President of Guyana at the time, could educate us on the meaning of contradictory. In the said year, the USA offered to establish a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) office in Guyana to help combat the drug trade. And although Mr. Jagdeo publicly stated the PPP government wanted the DEA in Guyana, his government made no effort to identify office space and implement the required measures to make it happen. In short, they did everything to frustrate establishing a DEA office in Guyana.

Mind you, these refusals for support happened during when there were thousands of gang related murders, extra-judicial killings and drug-trafficking reigned supreme.  Former Minister, Ronald Gajraj was Home Affairs Minister during much of this time. In fact, several phantom gang members were caught in a house just two doors down from Minister Gajraj’s house in Lamaha Gardens. I will leave it to readers to put the pieces together. Minister Gajraj was later implicated in engaging in several transactions with these criminals and shipped off to serve as Guyana’s ambassador to India.

Profiting off the poverty and manufactured race hate is never good for any country. This is what the PPP is doing, using its allies in the police force, civil society and private sector. The fact that numerous police officers have been linked to or are involved in criminal and corrupt activities, and covering up criminal investigations is nothing new. Think Monica Reece, Ricardo and Paul Rodrigues, Shawn Hinds, Linden “Blackie London”, Laurie Lewis and the list goes on and on and on. Police corruption is a cancer in society and the failure of the PPP to robustly address this cancer is helping it to spread. And they know this!

There are good reasons that Mitchell Caesar, Clifton Hicken and Wendell Blanhum were reassigned and relocated far from Georgetown. Guyana is in a very precarious situation. Instead of prioritising photo ops and donations to victims of crimes for political mileage, the President and the entire Cabinet should prioritize combating police corruption and improving the capacity of police officers to do the jobs they have been trained and sworn into do.

Regards,

C.A. Singh

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