… justifies shot in the air for tempering aggressive crowd

CHAIRMAN of the People’s National Congress Reform, Mr. Basil Williams, has pinned the single round shot during the party’s 18th Biennial Congress on the actions of a few raucous Region 10 party members instigated by Region 10 Chairman, Sharma Solomon and Former General Secretary, Mr. Aubrey Norton. Williams, for his part, gave his account of the events which unfolded on that day. On the ‘confusion’ at the gate of the PNCR Secretariat, Sophia, Greater Georgetown. he denounced that there had been any such occurrences,

but disclosed that, “the persons from Linden insisted on bringing in buses more of persons than could have been accredited to the Congress.”
He added that while he and a few others were in the secretariat building, “Mr. Sharma himself asked to go downstairs to talk to his comrades and when he was downstairs talking to his Comrades, we understand that several persons from Linden rushed the auditorium to gain entry.”
“At that point, a woman was trampled in the process and one of the security men who was there with the Returning Officer’s security outfit… fired off a round.” “That would have been caused by the Lindeners… rushing in at them to storm the entrance of the auditorium.”
Williams denied that the gentleman was hired by the PNCR and that he had been a part of Mr. Granger’s security detail.
The Chairman bemoaned that the actions of the few “could only have been for the purpose of trying to create confusion at Congress and they couldn’t do that because at the gate, they would have had to show certain identification.”
Williams said however, “We can’t control the road; that is for the Police, but there was no confusion within the presence of Congress place.”
He went on to stress that although there were representatives from all 10 Regions in Guyana, “there was not a problem with 9 regions… the only region that had some problems, or thought maybe that they had, was Region 10.”
When questioned on reasons why Solomon and Norton would have dropped out of the race causing such a clamour for a dark spell to fall on the proceedings, Williams said that “one of the overriding reasons for adopting that posture was because they did a count and they thought that their chances didn’t look very good… they decided that they weren’t going to participate.”
“The conventional view in the Congress was that they would not have fared well if they had contested.”
Summing up the day, Williams pronounced “we had a good and orderly Congress, no chaos occurred within the presence of Congress Place, nothing within the gathering inside the hall of Congress Place.”