THE burning, consuming desire of the Opposition to have Minister of Home Affairs, Clement Rohee, on the witness stand before the Linden Commission of Inquiry eventually materialized. Of great significance is the evidence that emerged from the minister in relation to the APNU/PNC pre-commission statements that he gave instructions to the police to shoot protesting Lindeners.

Attorney-at-Law Nigel Hughes made much of Minister Rohee’s phone records, which became a slap in Hughes’s face, and which records could not really establish that Minister Rohee gave instructions to the police to shoot anyone in Linden. On this note, I wonder about the fuss being made by the Opposition about the minister speaking to a senior police officer on the ground after the occurrence of the fatal incidents at Linden. Any reasonable person would expect that Minister Rohee, who carries ministerial responsibility for public order and safety, would want to know — and is entitled to know in those circumstances — what was taking place at Linden. And this, Minister Rohee told the Commission of Inquiry, was the reason for his call to Commander Hicken.

Undoubtedly, the evening of July 18th 2012 at Linden could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as normal; and in the tension and volatility of the moment, one could not expect a rigid adherence to practices relating to channels of communication and standards of protocol.

Minister Rohee’s quest to be informed had to be dictated by the availability of his sources of information. Minister Rohee told the Commission that efforts to contact Commissioner Brummell were futile.

This Commission of Inquiry has seen opposition protagonists emerging to be at variance with each other, and adopting conflicting and vacillatory positions. On the one hand, there is the position of the Chairman of the AFC, Attorney-at-Law Nigel Hughes; on the other hand, the Chairman of the PNC, Attorney-at-Law Basil Williams, was contending that Minister Rohee gave no instructions to the police, and that amounted to a dereliction of his ministerial duty.

Minister Rohee however, seemed well aware of the statutory limits to his ministerial role in relation to the police force, and by his fortright evidence clearly established that day to day charge for the operations and command of the police force did not rest with him.

Regrettably, flowing from the minister’s evidence, the print media, particulary the Stabroek News and the Kaieteur News, thought it newsworthy to report on the kind of shirt the minister was wearing, but failed to identify and recognize the highly commendable public professionalism of Minister Rohee, established through his testimony before the Commission.

Either newspaper, in its report, has omitted and/or failed to place emphasis on a very compelling statement made by Minister Rohee before the Commission. In brief, Minister Rohee made the point that he was being unjustly blamed for the shooting death of three Lindeners on July 18th, and that he was being made out to be the villain in the scheme of things.

Additionally, Minister Rohee’s further contention on a significant and important point was that some of those in the campaign to vilify him were in the room, and some were out of the room. Stabroek News and Kaieteur News significantly omitted to report this latter statement by the minister.

The Guyanese people, however, are well aware that the events at Linden were not spontaneous. The events at Linden in July 2012 were well studied and planned. The huge crowds on the bridge on July 18th, 2012 did not stop to rest, as is being canvassed, but were in pursuit of a well orchestrated plan to block the bridge and close the gateway to the interior. Recall the words of PNC/APNU activist Aubrey Norton at a public meeting at the Palm Tree Cinema Square in Burnham Drive, Wismar on June 23rd, 2012, as reported by journalist Denis Chabrol in his online news report Demerara Waves on June 24th 2012. Chabrol reported: “…A Partnership For National Unity (APNU) Saturday night signalled that it would disrupt hinterland ingress and egress to pressure the Government into quashing a planned hike in electricity rates. Chabrol quoted Aubrey Norton as telling Lindeners: “We have to be prepared to achieve our objective. We stand at the gateway to the interior. I say no more… We must mobilize our children, we must mobilize the youth, we must mobilize ourselves, and we must be ready to do what we require to stop this Government from bringing repression to the people of Linden… The only solution to this Government comes from pressure, more pressure… We have to put them in the pressure.”

Those were powerfully incendiary words coming from an influential PNC/APNU activist to an audience whose passions were undoubtedly inflamed. But Norton’s statements must not be looked at in isolation. They must be placed in the context of equally inflammatory racist sentiments expressed by Nigel Hughes and David Hinds. At a symposium held at the Mocha Primary School on January 30th 2011, Nigel Hughes reportedly told his audience: “It is time we regain power in this country; it is necessary for Africans to regain power to stop Government from marginalizing and oppressing Africans.” And David Hinds, at the Palm Tree Cinema Square in Wismar on the 7th July, 2012, told his audience: “The PPP is on a campaign to destroy black communities like Buxton and Linden.”

The foundations for subsequent events at Linden were being carefully laid. By July 18th 2012, Lindeners demonstrated that they had been sufficiently mobilized and ethnically incited and aroused. This is an important context in which the events at Linden must be viewed, and this approach is being de-emphasised by the media.

The intellectual authors of the events leading up to the July 18th 2012 occurrences at Linden have, however, donned suits and are masquerading as champions of the Linden cause; but beneath the façade of the suits, they harbour no more than naked political ambition and opportunism, using the people of Linden with utter disregard for their welfare and well-being in their vain political pursuits.
Before the Commission of Inquiry, Nigel Hughes’s focus on Minister Rohee’s meeting with senior police officials on 17th July, 2012, and his questions on the length of that meeting, must be seen as a spurious attempt by him to possibly suggest that it was at that meeting that Minister Rohee had the opportunity to give instructions to the police on their course of action at Linden.

He failed miserably to establish this baseless contention through the phone records he asked to be produced, but Minister Rohee’s evidence was clear. He told the Commission of the meeting with senior police officers on 17th July, 2012, and said that he was briefed on the emergence of possible scenarios at Linden, and on the likely police response. He said he closed the meeting with an exhortation to the commissioner of police to “let peace and order prevail.”

Why is a good man being persecuted? How more commendable conduct do we expect from our Minister of Home Affairs?