DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE – as violent pre-election confrontations escalate …Constitutional rights, freedoms of every Guyanese at jeopardy – AG Nandlall
AN escalation of election campaign-related violent confrontations is a symptom of democracy literally being under siege in Guyana and the constitutional rights and freedoms of every Guyanese are presently at jeopardy.Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, has since condemned what he called, “this assault on freedom and democracy in a most condign manner.”
Nandlall, by way of a public missive yesterday, said “the perpetrators must understand that violence, intimidation, fear and authoritarianism will never be tolerated in this land again.”
The minister related that on Sunday evening last, as supporters of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) were returning home from a rally held by the Party at Albion, Berbice, persons on the Public Road at No. 51 Village, threw missiles and opened containers of corrosive substances into their passing vehicles, causing injuries to many, including a young girl.
According to Nandlall, this horrific act comes on the heels of the wanton destruction of PPP/C’s billboards, flags and other paraphernalia.
He noted too that PPP/C political activists putting up campaign materials are also publicly being threatened with violence.
Nandlall, in his public missive yesterday, said: “I hope that GECOM (Guyana Elections Commission), the election’s observer teams, rights based organisations and indeed every Guyanese will no longer continue to seek refuge in silence.”
Qualifying his conclusion of ‘democracy under siege’ in Guyana, the Attorney General pointed out too that, “a PPP/C public meeting scheduled to be held at Sophia, was forced to be postponed because the vehicle that was announcing the meeting was stoned and violence was threatened if the meeting took place.”
The police, he said, was also forced to intervene and bring calm to a PPP/C public meeting in Region 10, as a result of the behaviour of Vanessa Kissoon, an APNU Member of Parliament.
He noted too that “a strikingly ludicrous criminal private charge has been instituted against former President, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo for statements he allegedly made at a public political event at Babu Jaan with the clear intention to muzzle him on the campaign trail.”
Nandlall has since surmised that the one common thread running through the documented litany of infractions “is that democracy is under siege and the constitutional rights and freedoms of every Guyanese are at jeopardy.”
Nandlall, who serves as the official legal advisor to Government, said “these atrocities assume particular significance in a Guyanese political context and is indeed reminiscent of a period in our history where elections were routinely rigged and citizens, including political leaders, brutalised, imprisoned and killed for merely raising a voice in objection.”
According to the Legal Affairs Minister, “significantly, during this period, there was no free press to which the citizenry could have turned; no effective Parliament to which they could have petitioned to ventilate the abominations, since the elections were so rigged to ensure that the Government of the day enjoys a two-third majority in the House, rendering the Opposition members in that August body, mere toothless poodles; and, indeed, no truly independent judiciary to which they can resort for legal protection and redress, as the flag of the ruling party was flown in the compound of the Court of Appeal of Guyana, the then apex of the judiciary, signalling to the citizenry and the world that the governing party was paramount and the judiciary subservient.”
He said that the situation was further compounded by the fact that the major political party in the Opposition-coalition, the People’s National Congress (PNC), “denies that these travesties ever occurred while the other coalition partner exhorts the nation not to be a prisoner of the past.
Minister Nandlall has since observed too that neither of the factions in the political Opposition have demonstrated “any appreciation nor remorse, for the gravity of the wrongs perpetrated against the citizenry.”
