Pres Ali accuses WPA’s Ogunseye of terrorism, other offences

Last Updated on Saturday, 11 March 2023, 14:23 by Denis Chabrol

President Irfaan Ali on Saturday accused the opposition of waging “terrorism” against his mainly Indo-Guyanese backed administration because of a call for sympathetic action by the Afro-Guyanese-domination.

“All of that in any modern society can be easily classified as statements and a stage that promoted hate, racism, terrorism against the State and seek to influence people in a direction that can create havoc, disharmony and destroy any modern democratic society,” he said in a live Facebook statement.

Attorney General Anil Nandlall, who is Secretary to the Defence Board, has already stopped short of saying that Mr Ogunseye might be charged with sedition, seditious libel, inciting riotous behaviour and exciting racial hostility and treason

In clear reference to Working People’s Allliance (WPA) executive member Tacuma Ogunseye’s expectation that mass uprising against the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) administration would be supported by the police and defence forces, the President noted that such a statement by “racist, opportunistic, dismantlers” was made on a stage at a public meeting shared with Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton.

The President said the offending statement sought to urge respectable, disciplined men and women in uniform to participate in a “system that destroys democracy.” “They know nothing about unity and building our country together,” he said.

Rhetorically, Dr Ali dared the opposition to target him and his governing PPPC. “Your President will stand up every single day for what is right, will stand up every single day in support of democracy, in support of unity, in support of development so all the guns that he is talking about, let him turn it to me because no gun or bullet will stop us on this path from unifying people, on this path of developing our country, on this path of uplifting the lives of our people; the people of this country,” he said.

He asked the private sector, civil society and the religious community to state whether those who support that call by “a pack of jokers, deceptive haters, racists, divisive propagandists who utilise a stage in which they seek to use people as pawns.”

He noted that whenever the PPPC is on office, his party has to deal with that type of utterance.

Dr Ali also criticised the Opposition Leader for sharing the same stage with the Working People’s Alliance whose executive member Tacuma Ogunseye appealed to the security forces on the basis that they are mainly Afro-Guyanese. The People’s National Congress Reform and the Working People’s Alliance have been consistently accusing the mainly Indo-Guyanese supported People’s Progressive Party Civic-led administration of racial discrimination in the distribution of lands, award of contracts, administration and the distribution of oil wealth.

Opposition Leader Norton is on record as saying that he supports June 12, 2023- Local Government Elections Day- as a Day of Resistance but disagrees with a total boycott of the polls as the opposition needs to preserve its strongholds.

The Chairman of the Joint Services Brigadier Godfrey Bess on Friday said the security forces are apolitical, despite its ethnic makeup, and will continue to uphold Guyana’s Constitution. He appealed to social activists and commentators to desist from making such comments.