LET’S pick sense out of nonsense in relation to three days of burglary at the office of the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA).

Firstly, the press release said it was a break in at the office of Policy Forum (PF) at Hadfield Street and Austin Place. This is misleading. PF consists of the Catholic Church, the GHRA and the Trade Union Council. The point person for PF is GHRA’s president, Mike Mc Cormack

PF has no office of its own and is accommodated at the GHRA office. PF is in receipt of hundreds of millions of Guyanese dollars through the EU Embassy in Georgetown so it could buy a building of its own.

I am in possession of original documents in which the EU mission has, over the past years, distributed hundreds of millions of dollars to certain anti-government civil society entities. The amount is staggering. I am willing to transmit these documents to the Office of the President, Office of the Vice-President, and Attorney-General Chambers. Also, the Chronicle and DPI.

The PF press release noted that the break-in occurred when the staff was attending a meeting called by the Guyana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Again, that is misleading. PF has no staff of its own but piggybacks on the GHRA. Most of the year, the GHRA’s office is closed. I suggest anyone ride or drive past the place and you will see it is always closed.

Now PF stated that they suspect the office was vandalised out of mischief because of its disagreement with the government over PF representation in EITI. This reasoning is pathetically comical.

Let’s do an analogy. A company wants the jury to acquit its CEO in a court case. It targets a particular juror. But the CEO is freed. It makes no sense to target the juror; for what purpose? The juror cannot help the CEO in any way because he is freed.

PF says it was vandalism to get at them over EITI. But PF is not the civil society representative in EITI. It cannot initiate action inside EITI against the government, so what sense it makes to burglarise the office three times? Less than one percent of the population knows about EITI and what it does, so why should the government try to get at PF through ransacking its office?

Could the PF office come under attack by anti-government conspirators in order to let PF think it is being targeted by the state? Rumour is maybe PF staged the thing itself to make the government look bad? After the first break-in on November 25, there was a second burglary the next day – November 26.

In its second press release on the second break-in, PF did a strange thing and you wonder if they slipped up in the second conspiracy to blame the government. In its second press release, PF said that despite substantial grille work (their words) and MCC security company alarm, vandals targeted the building again.

Now if the structure is thoroughly grilled and has an MCC alarm system, how did the first invasion occur? And is it not commonsense to tighten up on security after the first burglary. All humans react like that. People would normally identify the spot where the intruders used and they tighten up security in that area.

PF said in the first break-in, nothing important was taken but there was evidence of vandalism so PF was targeted. Again, in the second invasion, again nothing was taken but senseless destruction occurred.

Now there was a third break in yesterday (Thursday). In the second burglary, a window was screwed opened. In the third attack, the window, next to the tampered window in the second invasion was the one the thieves used.

Why weren’t the windows secured after the very first attack? Well, everything is senseless about these three intrusions. Why would the state conspirators go after PF and vandalise its office for three days in one week when PF is not on the board of EITI?

Here is my take. After the vote of civil society groups to select representatives to EITI and PF lost out, somebody staged the burglary to make the government look bad because PF was in a quarrel with the government as to which civil society group should be in EITI. PF believed that it should have been that group.

I was willing to concede that a mischief-maker staged the vandalistic attack to get PF to blame the government, but the second intrusion and the third attack made the whole thing comical. Maybe PF sympathisers could have hired a group of conspirators to make the thing look real and blame the government but not this comical pantomime.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.