Gajraj, McDonald should resign over police failure to charge Good Hope trio - WPA
Stabroek News
December 18, 2002
Denouncing the failure of the police to charge three men held at Good Hope with a variety of arms and equipment, the Working People's Alliance yesterday called for the immediate resignation of the Minister of Home Affairs, Ronald Gajraj, and the acting Commissioner of Police, Floyd McDonald.
A WPA release yesterday stated that "the failure by the police to impose charges against the detained persons on December 9 at the habeas corpus hearing in the High Court after they requested time to do so, is inexplicable, unacceptable bungling of the worst kind."
According to the WPA, this action of the police is pregnant with suspicion and underscores the already diminished confidence Guyanese have in the Home Affairs Minister and the acting Commissioner of Police.
Further, the party asserted that "...if these persons fail to submit their resignations, President (Bharrat) Jagdeo who has constitutional responsibility for the functioning of the government should dismiss them. If he fails to act on this issue, WPA calls on him to tender his own resignation. As this country teeters on the brink, the President must no longer be seen as an apologist for corruption and incompetence."
The party is also calling on the United Nations and nations of the Commonwealth to closely examine the domestic situation here "without any preferences and age-old assumptions, but bearing in mind the interests of those without the power of the State or the power of weaponry."
According to the WPA, Shaheed Khan, one of the original three persons detained by the police at Good Hope is a fugitive from justice in the USA. The party stated that he is wanted by the US Marshals Office in the District of Vermont since 1994 for Federal firearms violations, and should be expeditiously investigated. The party contended that in light of the admission by the Minister of Home Affairs that the Good Hope trio had in their possession illegal equipment "the failure to institute charges ... defies logic and flies in the face of national concerns."
"This development is further evidence of the deteriorating political culture of those who run the country," the WPA declared. The party said that the present unhealthy and troubling situation resulting from not charging the men who were intercepted at Good Hope as well as their two accomplices, when added to the political, social and economic crisis in the country has spawned many evils. "The lives and livelihood of Guyanese of all strata in the society are now threatened and the very future of the nation's children severely jeopardised," the WPA said.
An examination of the reality of present-day Guyana, the party posited, shows that "not only is our economy narco-driven, but our national politics is tarnished by alien influences whose chief instruments are the gun and blood money."
The WPA said that given the deep racial polarisation and partisan enclaves that now define Guyana's socio-political relationships and impinge on its international relationships, the quality of the country's politics is deeply affected.
"The country staggers, drunk from the brutal punches of drug lords and other bandits and the escalating instances of extra-judicial killings, whether officially sanctioned or not," the party said.
Further, it contended that the "issue of crime is now a question of whose crime and which criminals."
The Social Partners, the WPA said, must now come to the realisation that there is 'more in the mortar than the pestle' and that what they once deemed to be a matter of emergency is now in fact an emerging national dilemma. "The situation is so critical that we are threatened with anarchy and show increasing signs of being a 'failed state'," the party added.
Because of the conditions that now confront the nation, the WPA hailed the recent attempt at a human chain linking the two major parties as "an act of imagination for national salvation."
