IT seems that dark shadows from the past are hovering over Guyana, and these could haunt us for a while longer. When it had appeared that remarks made by former Attorney General Anil Nandlall about gunmen attacking a newspaper were just idle rumshop chatter between friends, the frightening spectre now looms of the former bodyguard of the former AG and top PPP leader being linked to the assassination of political activist Courtney Crum-Ewing, who was gunned down and killed on March10, 2015 while he was telling his villagers to vote the PPP/C out of office. The slain former soldier is today symbolised in the form of a bull-horn, which he had used in his one-man crusade.
His fight was triggered by the perceived threats made by Nandlall of impending terror against a non-government newspaper, and Crum-Ewing had embarked on a 100-day protest outside the office of the then Attorney General. When the dissident elevated his protest to include calls for the removal of the PPP from office on account of claims of widespread corruption, former President Donald Ramotar callously deemed him a “nuisance”.
Now, Sean Hinds, a self-professed member of a Death Squad associated with Ramotar’s party and Government, has made what appears to be damning statements that link the killing of Crum-Ewing to a wider, and growingly bizarre carnival of death of opponents of the former regime. Hinds, an ex-cop, gave details to a TV journalist of the many episodes of assassination that included that of civil rights activist, Ronald Waddell, who was riddled with bullets from an AK-47 outside his home in suburban Georgetown whilst Hinds was watching from a vehicle that was parked a short distance away.
Hinds claimed that he recalled that chilling murder, for which he named as assassin a former senior police officer. In widely circulated reports, at least two former Government ministers could possibly be implicated in the saga of death at a time when some 500 civilians and security personal were killed in what was originally described as a war among drug dealers.
When a Government Minister, Satyadeo Sawh, was gunned down in his own home, it shattered the myth that the spate of killing was linked to drugs only. Sawh’s death would appear to be political, but no inquiry was ever ordered by the former Government, which had tried to pin that crime on the then Opposition People’s National Congress (PNC).
Today, the dark clouds are drifting and hovering over Robb Street, and it is likely that more revealing indictments would be made that might link the PPP to a crime syndicate that was capable of settling political scores not by ballots, but by bullets.
The ominous warning of former security Minister Clement Rohee, now General Secretary of the Opposition PPP, that “who not dead will be badly wounded” now comes home to haunt his party.