General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo has underscored that the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC/R), from its formation, has had an extensive history of stealing elections and subverting various constitutional bodies.
He made the remarks while speaking to the media during his weekly press conference.
Dr Jagdeo underlined that some of the opposition members and their sycophants cannot believe that an impartial investigation into allegations of police corruption can be undertaken by the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU).
For context, SOCU opened an investigation into allegations of malpractice by a senior official within the Guyana Police Force (GPF).
“The PNC and AFC, particularly the PNC because of its history, have had this habit of interfering with constitutional bodies, subverting their professionalism, subverting the professionalism of the institutions of state throughout their entire history from its formation. It has become a habit to them…They like to steal elections and subvert institutions,” he said.
The general secretary continued, “They cannot believe that the institutions can act professionally because when people have a habit of subverting institutions. They think that their opponents will want to do the same thing.”
The PNC has a history of using GECOM, an independent institution, to rig the elections in the entire period until 1992.
This, he noted, has been well documented by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) who conducted various documentaries relating to how it was done including overseas voting, voting with fictitious names and stuffing the ballot boxes with replaced votes.
Secondly, he pointed to the fact that the PNC has a history of subverting the army’s professionalism.
“The army, under the law, must protect this state and must always act lawfully. The PNC subverted the army. They put a lot of political people through the YSM at that time into the army. They used the army to steal the elections and that is documented too. The army departed from what its constitutional duties were when they went and collected the ballot boxes,” he indicated.
Further, the PNC subverted the judiciary too.
“There was a time when the PNC flag, not the National Flag, flew over the High Court. It was an era of party paramountcy. They can some iconic pictures of that happening,” he added.
Also, during the previous government tenure in office, he noted that SOCU was reporting directly to Khemraj Ramjattan.
SOCU was established by the PPP to be an investigative arm of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). This was when the FIU came up with money laundering and suspicious transactions.
The general secretary further maintained that SOCU will do a professional job regardless of who has committed any illegal act, and are already demonstrating that they have the full authority to do so.
“Anyone implicated in financial impropriety or any illegal act could be questioned by SOCU, regardless of how far up the power chain goes, particularly in the matter before SOCU now. Investigations would be completed and the results would be known to the public,” Dr Jagdeo underlined.