PNCR/APNU/AFC operatives must be held accountable for lies

General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo has said that the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and Alliance for Change (AFC) operatives must be put under the spotlight to face scrutiny for their countless fabrications.

The GS was at the time specifically addressing AFC’s Nigel Hughes’ contention that hundreds of Afro-Guyanese men disappeared during the PPP/C government’s tenure in office.

Hughes on a social media programme on November 10, 2024 had said, “Has anybody apologised for those 1,200 African males that disappeared that we still don’t have a Commission of Inquiry for?” At the time he was deflecting from questions on apologizing for the AFC’s role in the attempt to rig the March 2020 General and Regional Elections.

The PPP General Secretary dismissed this statement as a historically blatant lie intended to mislead the Guyanese people. He berated Hughes for attempting to resuscitate the false narrative in 2024.

“This is a lie that he and others of his ilk carried on for many, many years to keep people away from us, saying that we were targeting young black men,” he said.

Dr. Jagdeo added, “…I’ve seen the rumors again surface, resurface. I still hope that when the media meets Nigel Hughes and the AFC that they will ask him about 1,200 persons that he said disappeared – Afro-Guyanese men who disappeared under the PPP. It is a blatant lie. But he has peddled that once again in 2024…he is prone to stretch the truth, Nigel Hughes, and in a very dishonest manner. He should be given an opportunity by the media to say where he got that figure from.”

In November 2019, the 32-page findings of an investigate report by the independently–run Stabroek News, exposed the falsehoods peddled by the APNU+AFC Coalition about the crime wave and dismantled the notion that young Afro-Guyanese men were killed indiscriminately.

The Stabroek News investigative report pointed out that some 420 persons were killed between February 2002 and September 2006 – 151 murdered by bandits, 30 security officers were killed and 239 were killed during confrontations with the police and in unexplained circumstances. It added that the drug trade was a major part of the period in question.  After the report was published, comments along this line subsidised, but has returned and are now greatly exaggerated with the claim.

The PPP general secretary underscored the fact that Opposition members must be held accountable for the lies that they throw into the public domain.

“There are a few people in the country – and the numbers are diminishing – but a few people will believe whatever they tell them. But thankfully, the numbers are diminishing, because they’ve lied so much to their supporters that people hardly believe them,” he pointed out.

According to Dr Jagdeo, Hughes is prone to making dishonest and exaggerated claims, while avoiding media scrutiny because he is unwilling to be held accountable.  He said that Hughes should be given the opportunity to clarify and give merit to this statement.

This modus operandi is vastly different from the transparent and consultative approach that the PPP/C government has employed.  “We come out routinely. We deal with people directly. They give links that are fake. They sometimes livestream things after the press conference to avoid questions. They hide from the media all the time, and they carry the whole party to those media excursions that they have, and so that format doesn’t allow them to be put under a lot of pressure to be asked pointed questions,” Dr Jagdeo highlighted.

The general secretary noted that Hughes is still arguing about the definition of a simple majority versus an absolute majority, even though this issue has already been settled at the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). He dubbed Hughes’ relentless pursuit of that idea childish and far divorced from reality.