Attorney-at-law and APNU Parliamentarian, Senior Counsel Roysdale Forde ‘dispatched’ a statement on Friday afternoon following the press conference of General Secretary of the ruling People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C), Dr Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday.

Forde said he and other MPs were seemingly subjected to the “verbal onslaught of attacks” by Jagdeo. He said this against the backdrop of Congressman Hakeem Jefferies’ earlier public statement late Thursday evening that he had met with Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton and other MPs to discuss issues relating to Guyana and Guyanese in the US.

According to the Senior Counsel, that statement proved Jagdeo to be a “pathological liar” and “corroborated” the opposition’s reports following the Washington Conference about Guyana. He seemed to suggest Jagdeo was cunning the public when he said “…I don’t know, I may be wrong because I did not follow it…”
He then regurgitated parts of what the Congressman said already, adding little political merit or juice to it.

Firstly, the opposition MP wasted 997 words to say nothing about this ‘big lie’ that Jagdeo was allegedly caught spreading. After all, Jagdeo boldly declared that he did not know in fact and he did not pay too much attention to the conference.

Using the journalistic lens, he never said it was a statement in fact or the truth but rather sought to give his analysis of the conference and what took place.
So, it is a shame and more than just convenient that Congressman Jefferies chose to issue that belated statement in the wee hours of Thursday to add to the opposition rhetoric that they did in fact have some meeting with someone of consequence.

It is also a shame that the APNU and AFC could not use the pen or words of Forde to state clearly where the winning SOPs are, or when the public will be able to see them. It is even more than alarming that Forde chose to write about Jagdeo as opposed to the administration of justice and the slothfulness of the judiciary in hearing the cases before it in a timely manner that have to do with the APNU+AFC attempt to steal Guyana’s election or democracy in 2020.

This is not a statement that a Senior Counsel should be issuing or a future leader of the PNC. This is not a statement any politician should write because it is laughable, desperate and sad. There is nothing intellectual about it or legally groundbreaking.

Leave the discoveries to the journalists and PR gurus in PNC, APNU and AFC. Forde will be better off, sitting in an office planning his ascension to the top job in the PNC.
Secondly, Jeffries made no mention of Norton’s calls for a clean or new voters list and the biometric verification systems at polling stations. He just glossed over that? Or is everyone to take it that that never was important to him?

Jefferies must know that Guyanese are intelligent and know when ‘something’ is not right. The statement that he issued is not ‘right’. It seems forced and seeks to give undue credence to a conference that their own opposition personalities said was a talk-shop and nothing would come from it.

Maybe Jefferies wants to drop his game and get intertwined in local and Guyanese politics. This is conflicting and hard to believe especially with how he has changed his tone and rhetoric about Guyana after meeting President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, and other officials this year.

It is unbelievable that he would allow himself to be used by Rickford Burke, Norton and others here when he has ambitions of climbing the ladder in US politics. After all, they can not help him get to the top so why muddy the waters?

If he wants to temper his language towards the Government of Guyana, that is welcome but he must mind his associations with Norton’s opposition and Burke who the Vice President Jagdeo refers to as a criminal.

Jefferies knows he is not fooling anyone with his statement in which he carefully attributes certain political and other statements to the opposition, and nothing except the diplomatically correct things to himself.

Jefferies is on record in 2021 saying certain things and now in 2023, he is presenting a clean and refined image in the statement. The public here, at least, has never forgotten.
Thirdly, this statement coming from Forde is nothing but the opposition clutching at straws. Forde should answer the most pertinent questions about the conference as opposed to seeking to take issue with the tongue-beating and thrashing they got on Thursday from Jagdeo.

Can the Senior Counsel deny that Burke has done questionable things in the past? Why did the Granger Administration and the PNC keep him at a distance? Who paid for the opposition’s trip since PNC/R said it does not have money for even the holding of a Congress? What about the claim of one of the attendees and others who paid to attend the Conference?

How has the opposition benefitted in Guyana by being party to this conference and charade? What did they get from the conference apart from a listening ear from those Congressmen in Washington? What is the real motive behind the participation in the Conference? Who is the real pathological liar, if not Norton, Forde, and the opposition? Who is living in a fairytale? Was Jagdeo ‘vituperative’, or speaking the truth that doesn’t wear clothes?

The Senior Counsel must know that we are not impressed by his use of elaborate lexicons to confuse or kerfuffle the public’s mind.
Finally, someone apart from Jagdeo has to boldly say it. The conference has resulted in nothing for the state of opposition politics in Guyana. It produced no scientific, materialistic, or emphatical evidence against the government to show that it discriminates against its citizens on the basis of politics or race regardless of what the APNU+AFC party says. It will not have a long-term or short-term effect on this government or the next election come 2025. It will not change the public’s view of the opposition. It is still politically uninspiring, reactive, manipulative, and untrustworthy.