NO SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
Former President, Bharrat Jagdeo
Former President, Bharrat Jagdeo

–PPP ‘now working on’ substantiating Jagdeo’s ‘Indian under siege’ claim

 

By Svetlana Marshall
THE People’s Progressive Party (PPP) could not, up until yesterday, provide empirical evidence to support the claim that Guyanese of Indian origin are being assaulted in Guyana.“There is an assault on our democracy. There is an assault on people of Indian origin. There is an assault on supporters of the PPP,” Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo was quoted as saying recently at an Albion Reunion celebration in New York.

Asked yesterday whether he had evidence to substantiate those claims, PPP General Secretary Clement Rohee, although jumping to the defence of Jagdeo, said he had none at the moment, since it was now being compiled.

“We are now in the course of documenting instances where witch- hunting is the rule of the day, and those most likely will go to the International Human Rights Organisation,” Rohee said.

And despite the media’s stoutest efforts to get him to provide a single name that would support his party’s claim, Rohee was unyielding. All he would say was that the PPP will release the information when the time is right.

Asked whether it was decent for the former president to make such claims abroad, the General Secretary responded in the affirmative, saying: “One thing I can say is that Mr. Jagdeo is not an indecent man. So if he is not an indecent person, then obviously his statement has to have a high degree of decency. Decency has a strong connection with honesty and the truth.”
DESPICABLE
Government, in a statement on Monday, has said Jagdeo’s claim that there is an “assault on people of Indian origin” is despicable, is without any basis, and is a complete figment of his imagination. On the contrary, the statement said, the policies of the Coalition Government are designed to achieve the good life for all Guyanese; not a handpicked few, as was the case under the PPP regime, which was rejected by the Guyanese electorate on May 11, 2015 in free and fair elections.

“Speaking to a predominantly Indo-Guyanese audience, Mr Jagdeo attempted to inject among them a feeling that they are victims. The recent census has shown that the exodus of Indo-Guyanese was not abated during Mr. Jagdeo’s 12-year tenure as President.
Instructively, the single largest exodus went to the United States of America, where they live and work under the presidency of an African American.

“Also, under Mr Jagdeo’s presidency, Guyana witnessed the incestuous relationship with drug lords that spawned the death of hundreds of young people and several episodes of massacres and assassinations, including that of a sitting government minister.

“Mr Jagdeo is in fact insulting the intelligence of Indo-Guyanese and all Guyanese who have repudiated him for the pervasive corruption under his regime.

“The Coalition Government remains committed to stabilising the Guyanese economy after years of lawlessness, nepotism, corruption, cronyism, mismanagement, misrule, and the flagrant misuse of resources,” the Government statement said.

In a direct response to the Government’s statement, Jagdeo said that his statements were no different from the ones he had made in Guyana.

“The comments I made in New York were no different to the ones I have made in Guyana – at press conferences and on the campaign trail in the lead-up to the March 2016 Local Government elections. I spoke to the issues of racial and political discrimination, the lack of an economic plan, the taxation policies, as well as the repressive laws that have been advanced and the threats to local democracy under the APNU+AFC Coalition.

“Despite the charges made, my record on bolstering racial harmony and advancing equal development across the country regardless of race speaks for itself. That is not a position I need to defend. However, I have spoken out, and will continue to speak out about the injustices against our people,” Jagdeo has said in a statement.

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