…as she refutes recent statements by former Commissioner Felix
FORMER Minister of Home Affairs and one of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP/C) executive members, Gail Teixeira, emphatically denies that there was ever any interference by her office or the government in the Guyana Police Force’s operations, as alleged by  former Commissioner of Police, Winston Felix. Teixeira made this pronouncement during a press briefing at Freedom House, the party’s headquarters, yesterday, when she responded to recent public statements by former Commissioner of Police, Mr. Winston Felix, who is now a member of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), referring to the period July 2004 to August 2006, when she held the office of Minister of Home Affairs.
She said, “Mr. Felix, silent for the last five years, has crept out of his cloistered quarters and appears to reveal his “cloven hoof”. His recent forays into the political arena have been read, l am sure, by many in the Police Force and myself, of course, with some interest on his pronouncements on matters of that period and hence.”
According to the former Home Affairs Minister, the fact that Felix is the first former Commissioner of Police to ever go on a candidate list for any political party, is  in itself revealing, and it is also noteworthy that Felix was identified by former US Ambassador Bullen for the same period in official correspondence released in Wikileaks Georgetown 290, March 28, 2006, as “his most trusted and effective interlocutor on law enforcement issues”.
She took the opportunity to address specific points raised by Felix in several articles in the Stabroek News and Kaieteur News, among them his claim that the Guyana Police Force was starved of resources.
As to the veracity of this, she pointed to the statistics as published in the budget records which are tabled in the National Assembly and which, according to her, reveal the opposite of what Felix is alleging.
“In 1991, the GPF capital and current budget totalled $333.7M, in 1992 $635.5, in 2001 $2.5B, in 2004 $3.29B, in 2006 $3.9B, and in 2011 $5.7B. This is to give a range to see the amount of money allocated to the GPF in exceptionally difficult years; this trend has continued with additional support. Hence $1B was allocated to the MOHA, the GRO, the Guyana Prison Service and the Guyana Fire Service; the Guyana Police received over 70% of the funds allocated under that ministry,” she revealed.
The funds were used to address the violent crime wave, to purchase weapons, ammunition, bullet proof vests, helmets, shields, radio communication, patrol vehicles, ATVs and other equipment necessary to fight crime, she added.
Further, Teixeira noted that recent statements made by the Former Commissioner of Police appear to be an attempt to justify his inability to have brought the crime situation under some level of control, and to cast blame for his inadequacies, which she described as another “diversionary tactic.”
“Mr. Felix stated that he stoutly resisted any attempt to have intelligence placed under the Ministry of Home Affairs, so much so that he resisted acting on reliable information that was provided to him. As a result of his revelations and in my regurgitating those days, I now am of the opinion that that resistance to act on reliable information was deliberate, and that his focus was all the time on what the APNU/PNC was drumming up then and now,” she said.
She also addressed the alleged “bugging” of the former Commissioner’s office and the famous taped conversation between Felix and the Vice Chairman of the PNC, Basil Williams.
“Mr. Felix confidently states that the bugging device had to have been placed in January 2006 when he was at a conference overseas. This is an interesting aspersion, as the investigation showed that it appeared to emanate from an external source, not a bugging device in his office; and he is well aware of that information. His own police also swept his office and found nothing. He sent the same police to sweep my office in July 2004, at my request. Did he have no confidence in his own police,” she continued.
Clearly however the conversation taped hit a hammer on the head of the nail, as it exposed the duplicity in a Commissioner of Police being thanked by a politician who had known links with the notorious leaders of the so-called “Buxton gang,”, Teixeira added.
Teixeira pointed out that Felix and the PNC, now APNU, owe the Guyanese people an apology because the criminal gangs could have been brought under control sooner, if Felix had not been diverted by the PNC and had not focused narrowly on only one component of the crime situation at that time.
She explained, “Maybe it is also time for the PNC/R-IG, now APNU– which has consistently failed to decisively and unequivocally condemn the criminal gangs and what happened in Buxton, to now, in 2011, do so in order to bring reconciliation and healing to the victims of the crime wave.
Teixeira, now the Presidential Adviser on Governance, during the press briefing yesterday, raised several other key issues and provided the necessary evidence refuting allegations by former Commissioner of Police, Winston Felix who has recently joined forces with APNU.