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Intimidation
Kaieteur News – Ever since he announced his candidacy for the upcoming elections, Businessman Azruddin Mohamed has had a torrid time during his outreaches in areas considered PPP strongholds.
Activists aligned to the ruling party in some communities in Regions 2 and Six have attempted to break up his meetings several times-some of them resulted in minor skirmishes.
For most part, the Presidential candidate for the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) and his team have not retaliated, but have sought to highlight these acts of aggression through their social media platforms. We at this newspaper condemn this anti-social behaviour by the PPP supporters. As we published on Monday the PPP’s efforts to monopolise political space and chase out those they deem unworthy of contesting elections is not just wrong—it’s dangerous. It portends a campaign season marred by tit-for-tat aggression, community flashpoints, and eventually, electoral violence. Political incitement in ethnically sensitive communities is not a game. It is a match tossed into a barrel of dry gunpowder. It is also ironic, that this type of anti-democratic behaviour has been going on for months now without any condemnation from the government and the ruling party.
Almost every week Mr. Mohamed has had to contend with PPP supporters showing up at his outreaches, confronting him and his officials as well as preventing him from meeting with citizens. This ugliness must be of deep concern, not only for Mohamed and his team, but also all the opposition parties because they too can face similar harassment as we head into the elections campaign season.
Confrontations at political meetings in Guyana is nothing new, but this did not feature in any major way in our past three general elections and we dare say that if this type of behaviour is not discouraged it will embolden extremists on all sides. The PPP will not be able to control the backlash when it begins its own campaign rallies in areas where it is weak. The very tactics they now condone may be turned against them, and the result will not be democratic debate, but civic disorder.
In a way, there seems to be some tacit agreement with the aggression towards Mohamed because even at the level of the party’s weekly news conference, the General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo refers to Mohamed in very crude and derogatory language. We have said before the current administration is so intolerant to criticisms that it would go to any length to silence persons who have opposing views to them. Certainly, this has not been limited to its attacks on the media, but also its political opponents.
The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) was right when recently it sought to draw parallels between the said President Forbes Burnham era and that of the PPP of today.
During an interview with the Guyana Chronicle prior to elections of 2011, then PPP General-Secretary, Donald Ramotar spoke of how he and his comrades had to brave the violent opposition during his party’s struggle for democracy in Guyana. According to the Chronicle article Ramotar admitted to being afraid, but still helped to organise and attended political meetings, while knowing that the meetings would inevitably attract attacks by what he terms “PNC goons”, mainly operating through the House of Israel and Rabbi Washington.
He said that PPP meetings were almost always violently broken up, recalling the 1973 period when he was in one really dangerous situation at Golden Grove on the East Coast, where the thugs badly beat some members and smashed members’ vehicles. “Dr. Jagan himself was injured during an invasion by “PNC thugs” on a platform at the Parade Ground, where he had been invited to speak in protest of the expulsion from Jamaica of Clive Thomas and other academics from the West Indies”, Ramotar reminisced according to the Guyana Chronicle. It would help now, even in the face of the electoral threats by Mohamed, if Mr. Ramotar would relate these experiences to his party comrades rather than them watching and cheering the intimidation and bullying being meted out to the Mohameds.
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