On January 26, at an event organised by the Indian Arrival Committee to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the horrific slaying of 11 persons in the East Coast village of Lusignan, Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Juan Edghill was reported by the Government Information Agency as saying “We still have issues of crime and security in our country but we must never mix and confuse the difference between regular crime and robbery as against what took place here in Lusignan”. GINA then went on to say that the Minister described the killings as a race hate crime and that he noted that the incident did not see the collapse of Guyana but that all citizens held together.

It is unclear what in Minister Edghill’s past would have given him the certitude to pronounce on the nature of the killings at Lusignan seven years ago as he was not part of the security apparatus of the state or embedded in the criminal justice system. Indeed, he was at the time ensconced in the position of Chairman of the constitutionally-mandated Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) which as its title suggests is intended to create comity, confidence and respect among the various ethnic groups.

To this day, neither the Jagdeo administration, under which three mass killings occurred in less than six months that year, nor the Ramotar administration, under which the trial pertaining to the Lusignan massacre collapsed, has been able to convince the Guyanese public of the motive behind the killings let alone bring the culpable to justice. Numerous theories exist for the killings but there are few facts.

So when he spoke on January 26, what Minister Edghill was meretriciously trying to accomplish was to play to the basest instinct of PPP/C campaigning for general elections: invoke the race card. It would not escape anyone, certainly not Minister Edghill’s attention, that he was speaking at an Indian Arrival Committee function and that nearly all of the victims and the attendees at the event were of one race group. So when he casually slipped in the description of the killings as a ‘race hate crime’ there could be no mistaking what he was intending to say.

His speech must be condemned in the strongest terms possible because of the ill will it can create between ethnic groups on the basis of a groundless assertion. Further, the pronouncement at an event sponsored by a group with close links to the PPP/C government will be seen as purely politically motivated and therefore exploitive of what remains a deeply traumatising tragedy.

Minister Edghill was no doubt carefully chosen by his government to deliver this toxic message to Lusignan villagers. Both the government and the ruling party should immediately enjoin their lead speakers at public gatherings to eschew in the coming months inflammatory talk such as Minister Edghill engaged in and to tread cautiously in their treatment of events such as the Lusignan killings.

What the Minister failed to acknowledge on January 26 was that the primary responsibility for the massacre lies at the feet of a government that was unable to provide security to its citizens and which seven years on has been unable to bring the perpetrators to justice. That is one of the objective truths of the Lusignan massacre.

In passing, Minister Edghill’s disturbing outpouring again raises the question of the conduct of former holders of high constitutional offices. As Chairman of the ERC, Mr Edghill was expected to comport himself as a Solomonic arbiter of race-based disputes: engaged but never showing a hint of partisanship. At every step of the journey his role was to salve the wounds of the people and their communities with a healing balm. While his tenure as ERC Chairman might not have yielded a clear improvement in race relations, his thoughtless and inappropriate remarks have scuttled whatever gains he had personally made in the discharge of his ERC mandate. His performance would have immediately transgressed Article 212 D of the Constitution relating to the ERC which says that "The functions of the Ethnic Relations Commission are to (a) provide equality of opportunity between persons of different ethnic groups and to promote harmony and good relations between such persons."

Holders of positions such as the chairmanship of the ERC should be of such conviction and standing in society that they would not seek to descend readily into the ethno-political fray as Minister Edghill has so enthusiastically and emphatically done on behalf of the PPP/C government.