Guyanese have known all Along About the PPP’s Crimes and Corruption. It never ceases to amaze me that supposedly intelligent and learned men in our society have not condemned outright the Peoples Progressive Party as a political party. These individuals, Ralph Ramkarran for example, seem to be under the impression that the continuous highlighting of the PPPs indiscretions by other members of society is partisan politics, that is, the Oppositions attempt to try to score brownie points against the PPP. Transcending this claim of partisan politics, my analyses and interpretations are grounded in fact and are aimed at highlighting fundamental problems which are inhibitors to our country’s economic and social progress. My own observations over the last two decades have led me to conclude that the PPP has transformed itself into an organization entrenched in organized crime, with its control of the government’s purse and the issuance of government contracts being its principal lever for extracting ill-gotten gains from Government coffers. I wish to share the following extracts from a research paper produced by Richard Millington in 2011 while attached to the George Washington University Law School as a Research Assistant at the time, which provides a more reasoned basis for my claims and conclusions regarding the Peoples’ Progressive Party. The full document is available at caribbeanamericanforum.org/?p=2039. “Jagdeo’s alleged criminal associations [were] so far-reaching and alarming that it motivated a senior official of the Colin Powell State Department (DOS) to regard him as a “Mafia” Head of State. Then US Ambassador to Guyana, Ronald Bullen, in a 2006 cable to DOS stated that Guyana was believed to be “a narco-state” and that “If Guyana is a narco-state, then Khan is its leader” – An indication that Jagdeo was compromised and had surrendered governance of the country to Khan’s criminal enterprise. [Winston] Felix drew the ire of Jagdeo over his aggressive pursuit of drug lords connected to Jagdeo’s ruling PPP, including now convicted criminal and accused murderer Roger Khan. Currently serving a 15 year sentence in the US for exporting and distributing narcotics in the US, Khan was Jagdeo’s ally and financier of the PPP. Jagdeo [] offered facile denials of any association with Khan, which strain credulity. There is at least one tape, reportedly in the possession of US officials, which purportedly shows him meeting Khan. Moreover, a Guyanese businessman informed US officials that on one occasion when he had an appointment with Jagdeo at Guyana’s Presidential Complex, he was made to wait for hours. He added that he was flabbergasted and got a stomach ache when he saw Jagdeo emerged from his office with Roger Khan. The sight of the President meeting with the country’s most notorious criminal incensed him and forced him to relocate from Guyana. Around 1999, Khan, at the urging of some members of Jagdeo’s regime, form a gang nicked-named the “phantom death squad.” The phantom gang unleashed a reign of terror on the Guyanese nation. It received governmental support through Jagdeo’s then Minister of national security Ronald Gajraj. Telephone records show Gajraj was in constant communication with gang leaders before and after major murders and executions. It was later discovered that Gajraj was the co-leader of the gang. The phantom gang committed over four hundred murders for hire and executions of mostly young African Guyanese men. It is also responsible for hundreds of kidnappings, including that of a US diplomat. The gang also assassinated then PPP Agriculture Minister Sash Shaw as well as anti-PPP journalist Ronald Weddell. Shaw was locked in a bitter skirmish with Khan when he was killed. Waddell, a television talk show host, believed Jagdeo governed by ethnic supremacy and was unrelentingly critical of the PPP’s association with Khan. Jagdeo had also accused him of forming an alliance with Buxtonans who were resistant to the PPP government. The melee between Khan and Shaw stemmed from Shaw’s abrupt cancellation of a land deal that was signed between Khan and corrupt PPP appointees on the Forestry Commission, which fell within Shaw’s ministerial portfolio. The deal awarded a large concession of lands to a company owned by Roger Khan, much to the chagrin of the US government. The US had harshly condemned the deal in its international Narcotics Control Strategy Report.” “Ronald Waddell was gunned down as he left his home in suburban Georgetown on January 30, 2006. During Khan’s trial in a New York federal court, Selwyn Vaughn – a former associate of Khan turned DEA and FBI informant, testified under oath that Roger Khan ordered Waddell’s execution. Vaughn testified that Khan sent him to be the lookout man to see when Waddell arrived home, where he kept surveillance. He said he observed Waddell arrive home, leave his car idling in the driveway and go into his residence. He called and informed Khan that Waddell had arrived home.” “According to Vaughn, Khan, while in their presence, telephoned Guyana’s Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy and informed him that Waddell had been shot and had been taken to the government-owned Public Hospital Georgetown (PHG). Khan then instructed Ramsammy to order emergency room doctors at the hospital to let Waddell die. No one was ever arrested for Waddell’s murder. It was also established in court that Ramsammy had, on behalf of the Guyana government, written a Florida company – “The Spy Shop” advising that the government of Guyana had granted approval for Khan to purchase high-tech surveillance equipment for importation to Guyana. Khan imported the equipment which he used to intercept his targets’ cell phone calls and to track their location before executing them. In March 2006, then Police Commissioner Winston Felix, and Army Chief of Staff Edward Collins, directed a joint services operation which targeted Khan. The Operation comprised officers from the criminal investigations division and tactical services unit (a SWAT team) of the Police Force. They were supported by members of the Defense Force intelligence unit. Several of Khan’s business establishments were raided, including the “Blue Iguana,” from which millions of dollars, believed to be drug proceeds, were recovered. Within days of the operation, Khan, who had gone into hiding, published a fullpage ad in the Stabroek newspaper boasting of being head of the “phantom gang” and claimed he was “working in close association with the Jagdeo government to “fight crime.” Khan also announced that he had bugged Commissioner Felix’s telephone presumably using the surveillance computers which he had imported, and would release a recording with Felix. In a move that suggested that he was in collaboration with the criminal to dismantle the country’s security infrastructure and defeat Felix, Jagdeo, as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, ordered Army Chief of Staff Edward Collins to disband the military intelligence unit.” “As the sordid episode unfolded, then national security minister, Gail Teixeira, who had just inherited the portfolio from her disgraced predecessor Ronald Gajraj, tried desperately to salvage her government’s criminal image by ingratiating herself to western diplomats, specifically to win the confidence of the American, British and Canadian governments – referred to as the ABC countries. She attained measured success by keeping them apprised of modest crime fighting efforts and by leaking details of internal PPP wrangling to then Charge D’Affaires of the US Embassy, Michael Thomas.” “Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said in the statement that “the United States is concerned by the Government of Guyana’s decision to reinstate former Home Minister Ronald Gajraj…. A Guyanese commission of inquiry looking into his links to the so-called ‘phantom death squad’ has found serious procedural irregularities in his official conduct related to his involvement with individuals who allegedly carried out extra-judicial killings…. We believe significant questions remain unanswered regarding his involvement in serious criminal activities…” The US position forced Gajraj to resign but Jagdeo immediately appointed him as ambassador to India and whisked him out of Guyana under cover of diplomatic immunity. Jagdeo then appointed Teixeira to replace him. Teixeira, who had previously served as Health as well as Youth and Culture Minister, was reassigned to the National Security ministry by Jagdeo under the guise that she would clean-up Gajraj’s mess. Ultimately she was removed from the cabinet and made a presidential advisor on governance. In May of 2010 Teixeira blatantly lied to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. Responding to a question from Canadian Ambassador Jeffrey Heaton on a fifteen year-old school boy, Twyon Thomas, whose genitals had been burnt by Guyana Police while they tortured him, Teixeira told the council that the government had compensated the child and provided him with counseling and medical treatment, and had brought the perpetrators to justice – a blatant falsehood. The total failure of the PPP government in its responsibility to provide security to Guyanese citizens is consistent with the mediocrity emanating from the minimal ethics and competence of the tragicomic and embarrassing triumvirate of Jagdeo, Teixeira and Rohee.”
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 01:45:20 +0000