Recommendations for President Ali and Attorney General Nandlall

Feb 15, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor

The Guyana community is about to hold a general election, due this year in a matter of months. Bearing this in mind and the need for as little prejudice and bias as possible, I make one or two recommendations and comments to remind those responsible of implicit duties that have not been performed.

First, I wish to remind the public that during the period after the general election of 2020, in the period immediately following the vote, His Excellency the President-elect, full of justified zeal, made a public statement in which he declared that rapes, including rape of children, had taken place in a certain constituency of self-respecting people. The police did not follow up with any investigation, and the president or his office has so far not withdrawn his remarks, which hang like a judgment over the heads of innocent people living in that constituency and not engaging in such offenses at that time. I recollect that his Excellency the President, who has proven himself to be a strong ruler in his own words, only considers whether it is necessary and fair not to allow the citizens of those electoral districts to enter the election with a sense of a shadow hanging over them that may well dampen or restrict their participation. This, to me, is a serious responsibility of His Excellency the President, who had ventured into the area of public accusation. That is one recommendation.

My second recommendation is directed to the president’s legal advisor, the Hon. Attorney General of Guyana. It will be recalled that when perhaps in an atmosphere of uncertainty about evidence to be presented against those accused of electoral offenses in the 2020 election, the President using his powers under the Commission of Inquiries Act (19:03) appointed a commission of eminent persons to discover and record evidence of the offenses alleged against persons around the time during the poll of 2020. When an unofficial citizen like me asked for a statement of the terms of reference which had not been given and which are an essential part of the Commission of Inquiry Act of 1903, the president made the surprising explanation that when the members of the commission met, they would arrange the terms of reference implying they would write the terms of reference.

We know how that ended. The commission members took the precaution of explaining to the public that they were not engaged in drafting the terms of reference for their mission. My concern here is that this committee has been appointed and has reported. One of the members appointed, an eminent jurist from India, did not finally join the team, and if any explanation was given for his declining to do so, it did not come to my notice. I hope I can find it somewhere. But the report of this commission has been handed in, and no action has yet been taken. I am sure the government has explained these delays to the public in its activity and frequent press conferences through the honorable Vice President. But with my disability, I have not been able to follow up on the internet and the abundant information on it, as is my custom. I will leave it there and hope that some understanding official related to these matters will consider whether it is necessary, prudent, and fair to explain to the Guyanese public.

I am now coming to the final item in this letter, one of a few I shall try to write because of its indirect reference to the upcoming elections. It concerns the unsolved homicides committed by police and civilians in the rural territory between Cotton Tree and Plantation Bath. At least three of them very young men. I know the head of government and state, the supreme executive authority, had lost no time in using the services of the Regional Security System (RSS), and we know that this effort on His Excellency’s part produced nothing of value so far as the public has been informed. I leave that there, but I wish to say this it is the most unfortunate and prejudicial atmosphere for the people living between Cotton Tree and Bath, both of which are rural communities in West Coast Berbice and it casts a shadow undeservedly, on their communities and hangs over them with prejudicial effect. Now, we are asking these communities to enter another general election when the young man was shot by the police in some clash that took place because he chose to protest. The brothers of one family are both Indians and Africans and a gentleman leaving Plantation Bath on the Sunday evening when these unfortunate lives came to an end. To this day, the fifth year after the events these matters have not gone through the preliminary inquiry stage. The RSS report itself had become controversial, and counsel claiming to be entitled to its contents seemed unsatisfied with their wish to be informed. I remember one counsel representing the victims taking personal initiatives with foreign governments in relation to some of these crimes.

Both the passage of time, calendar of months, and everything else, body language, of so many officials, tell us that these communities will soon be asked to put bandages on their wounds and go and vote. The people appealing to them should be reminded that they are not appealing to lower animals, who may sometimes considered as having no emotions. We are appealing to people deeply wounded by these events, and the speed with which the insolent authority is proceeding is not encouraging. It promises nothing healthy in such an essential process to the citizens on the eve of a general election. I leave it there for this letter. There are a few more points of that nature that I wish to raise. In the events just recounted we see that have not gone very far in time and quality of life from the days when a well-known bard made one of his characters complain of “the insolence of office” and the “law’s delays”

Yours sincerely,

Eusi Kwayana

(Recommendations for President Ali and Attorney General Nandlall)

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• general election, general election of 2020, Guyana community, recommendations

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