RETIRED Assistant Police Commissioner, Paul Slowe, has been appointed the chairman of the Commission of Inquiry into the alleged plot to assassinate President David Granger.

Slowe will be sworn in this morning by Chief Magistrate, Ann McLennan. Among other things the commission will inquire into the persons, places, time, circumstances and events by and through which allegations and reports came to be made of an intention or plan to assassinate the President. The commission will also report the findings, recommendation to President Granger.

Minister of State, Joseph Harmon said recently that President Granger ordered a CoI into the matter, and said, “We are going through the phases of preparations”.

Responding to concerns raised by the Opposition relative to the President’s confidence in the Police Force, the Minister of State stressed that the head-of-state has every right to determine if a matter requires a deeper level of investigation. Harmon said too that CoIs are used by the APNU+AFC administration as a mechanism to ferret out information, which would not necessarily be made available during regular investigations. In April, it was announced that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the police legal advisor were assisting with investigations into an alleged plot to shoot President David Granger, while he is on one of his many outreaches.

It is unclear what the Terms of Reference (TOR) are for the COI, but the Guyana Chronicle was told that it would address among other things the police’s investigation of the case. In April, an investigation was launched by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the police legal advisor into an alleged plot to shoot President Granger while he was on one of his outreaches.

Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, had disclosed that the administration had been provided with some information by the police about an ongoing investigation of this nature. Harmon noted that the security of the president has been increased and made it clear that while the president was popular there were some “misguided people”, and as such extra measures had to be put in place.

Meanwhile, in an interview on Nightly News, a man said he was approached to carry out the act spoke of a $7M bounty that was offered to him to shoot at President Granger during one of his outreaches. The $7M it was said was offered by a prominent individual. The whistleblower in the interview stated that the businessman told him “… President Granger, we have to have him assassinated before he moves from where he is living, before of course if he moves his security will enhance and you can’t get to him.”

He further related that the businessman told him, “you know we and the commissioner is friends, the whole judiciary is friends, we will take care of you, all you have to do is don’t let who you know get it done to know who is we, and we ain’t want know who you get.”

The informant explained that the businessman entered his house and brought out a large weapon which he collected and minutes later returned. He explained that he had approached the businessman to conduct a business worth $6M when the proposal was made to find someone to assassinate the President and he would be paid $7M. “The next day I go back to he and said watch, me ain’t deh in them thing yo know, me aint even want you tell me back about that,” the informant said, claiming that he never killed anyone before and was just a businessman.