PPP parliamentarian will have to tell all about alleged shooting threat- Jagdeo

Last Updated on Wednesday, 1 June 2016, 16:48 by Denis Chabrol

People’s Progressive Party (PPP) parliamentarian, Nigel Dharamlall will Friday have to tell all to his party’s Central Committee about an allegation that he threatened to shoot an official of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Jagdeo said the Central Committee meeting scheduled for Friday, June 3, 2016 is expected to hear from Dharamlall, a former Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs. “Clearly, he has to give solid explanations, believable explanations to the executive of the party and to us because the allegations are serious,” Jagdeo told a news conference.

Through his lawyer, Glenn Hanoman, Dharamlall has denied committing any offence and has essentially stated that he was cooperating with investigators.

Police have said that they were investigating the incident that occurred almost two weeks ago at Cummings Lodge, East Coast Demerara.

Jagdeo, former ministers Jennifer Westford and Bheri Ramsarran have found themselves before the court in recent months for various alleged offences. A private  criminal charge against Jagdeo has since been thrown out, while cases of alleged abuse and fraud against Ramsarran and Westford are still pending.

Referring to the numerous audits of several state agencies that had pointed to various alleged infractions by top officials of the then PPP-led administration, the Opposition Leader reiterated that any suspected law-breakers must face the court. “They will have to use the mechanism of the court to establish whether they are innocent or not and the reason why we have a greater confidence in the court than in the government being fair because if you look at the audits how they started, partisan people were selected to do the audits. Many of the audits read like the APNU (A Partnership for National Unity (APNU),” he said.

Jagdeo argued that the audits in many cases breached standard auditing principles by, among other things, failing to give or include responses to audit findings.