HOUSING and Water Minister, Irfaan Ali has once again lashed out at the Alliance For Change (AFC) for continuing to “engage in its politics of deception, trickery and lies”. Minister Ali said the AFC’s issuance of a press release yesterday is yet another attempt by its hierarchy to pull more wool over the eyes of Guyanese from the substantive issues that were raised at the ministry’s press conference on Friday last.

“It is no doubt another sordid and last ditch attempt to create distractions from the issue at hand which is the party’s deliberate fabrication, distortion and misrepresentation of the facts surrounding the allocation of land to private investors along the East Bank of Demerara,” Ali said in a response to the AFC statement.
The minister stated: “Clearly, the leader of the party, Khemraj Ramjattan has come in for heavy criticisms from the general public and his political colleagues for his verbal attack on an innocent public servant and the disrespect shown to a Minister of Government.
“As Housing and Water Minister, I am unaware that the government has instructed the tapping of Ramjattan’s phone or those belonging to the ministry. Additionally, the AFC’s attempt to draw extraneous matters in relation to the wiretapping of phones, legality of the same and other security issues has not escaped my attention.”
According to Minister Ali, the exact words uttered to the media were: “We are hoping that we can make a request of GT&T to have a recording of this also”. He said this comment was made in direct relation to “Ramjattan’s wanton and dastard attack on an ordinary and innocent Public Servant in my office”.
It is on this note, that Ali said he wishes to dismiss the AFC’s scaremongering, lack of political maturity and integrity.
“The party has shown that it lacks the ability to justify its public positions by advancing evidence and facts that could stand the test of scrutiny. The press statement by the AFC (yesterday) also exposes its unwillingness to upbraid its members who hold high offices when their conduct is less than favourable and appropriate,” the minister stated.
Ali said he stands by his earlier statements on Mr Ramjattan’s lies and distortions, as well as the earlier statements on his attack on the public servant.
“I therefore, reiterate a call for Mr Ramjattan to issue an immediate apology for his lawless, loud, abusive, unprofessional, unethical, immoral and highly offensive abuse of a public servant. This is the only ethical and moral thing that any human can do for such an abuse of power,” the minister declared.
He said no amount of dodging, shifting of the goal posts, smokescreen, red herrings and other distractions will cover the wrong that Ramjattan has done.
“If Ramjattan and his party fails to do this then it proves him not only unfit to hold public office as President for which he desperately aspires but it proves the AFC an unworthy political entity govern by a lack of ethics and standards,” Minister Ali charged.

BACKGROUND
Minister Ali, having taken umbrage at the Christmas Day Kaieteur News Headline: ‘Eccles to Providence hijacked by private developers’, presented the media with the facts of the case at a press conference he hosted on Friday last.

Alliance For Change (AFC) leader Mr Khemraj Ramjattan had told the Kaieteur News that hundreds of acres of land in central areas on the East Bank of Demerara had been distributed to a number of private developers in what appeared to be very unclear circumstances.
Minister Ali consequently invited Ramjattan, via email, to the press conference; but when the minister’s secretary called to remind Ramjattan about the press conference, she was told: “How can that ‘chap’ demand me to come to his press conference? Tell him to haul his ass!”

The Housing Minister said he had been affording Ramjattan the opportunity to publicly ask as many questions as he wanted before the press. “This is a man who talks about being upright, morally straight; and this is the way he speaks to an ordinary public servant who was merely doing her duties. I find this to be disgusting, lawless, and an abuse of power by Mr. Ramjattan,” Minister Ali declared.

“This is a man who speaks about transparency, openness, accountability and about professionalism; and this is the way he responds. He can tell me to ‘haul my ass’, I am a politician; but do not ever believe that you can humiliate a professional public servant who sits in my office and disrespect her the way he did. And I am calling for him to offer a public apology for the disrespect of this public servant! Nothing short of a public apology (will suffice),” the minister remarked.