The Opposition A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and Alliance For Change (AFC) have continuously spoken about “extra-judicial killings” which occurred during the early 2000s but failed to launch a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the period during their 2015-2020 term in office.
To settle the matter, Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday disclosed that his government will launch a CoI into the period.
“The Terms Of Reference are being drafted and soon the President will announce the COI so we will get to the bottom of this,” he said during his weekly press conference.
The Vice President was at the time responding to a statement from the AFC where that party indicated that the Government has failed to launch a CoI into many killings which occurred in the early 2000s.
Jagdeo pointed out that though the APNU+AFC Government launched approximately eight COIs during its time in office, it failed to investigate “the troubled period” though this was a promise leading up to the 2015 elections.
Former President David “Granger was notorious for launching Commissions of Inquiry. He did about eight of them and spent nearly $500M,” Jagdeo contended, questioning why the former administration did not launch a COI into the killings.
In this regard, he alleged that members from the opposition parties are culpable for the atrocities during that period. “PNC and AFC supported a group of bandits who escaped the prison and wrecked havoc on ordinary citizens of this country until they were either arrested or killed by the security forces,” Jagdeo expressed.
Therefore, the Vice President noted that the political parties resort to speaking about racism when they have nothing new to address.
“Because they have nothing new, they are trying to raise back the old race thing [of] 1500 young black men that we killed, their racist issue again to bring back the old rumours that they spread which is being disproved over and over again but they continue to perpetrate the lies,” Jagdeo told reporters.
The 2000-2010 period saw the killing of several criminals, police officers and civilians along with the loss of many weapons from the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Defence Force.
