Jagdeo says APNU+AFC operated a “criminal enterprise”

VICE PRESIDENT BHARRAT JAGDEO DIDN’T JUST ACCUSE HIS PRINCIPAL
POLITICAL OPPONENTS OF CORRUPTION, he went further in his recent press
conference denouncing former President David Granger and his government of allegedly
operating “a criminal enterprise”.
It must be sweet revenge for the VP to return this back-handed compliment many years after the
late Peoples National Congress (PNC) leader, Mr. Hugh Desmond Hoyte, at a press conference
at Congress Place, Sophia, blasted the then ruling Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) as
“Bharrat Jagdeo and his criminous crew”.
Jagdeo told reporters at his press conference last week that the Irfaan Ally administration has to
“clean up” the mess inherited from the debauched A Partnership for National Unity, Alliance For
Change (APNU+AFC) Granger government.
“It was a criminal enterprise that APNU+AFC was operating not a government. It…didn’t care
much about the ordinary people. But there was a small group of people that they were doing
illegal things for,” Jagdeo claimed.
If, as he asserted, the APNU+AFC was intimately intertwined in the dark criminal underworld,
then the Granger administration had to establish a structure to benefit network members to the
exclusion of the rest of the citizens of the 55-year-old independent South American Republic.
Bribery would flourish because police officers and other low-level bureaucrats would, as grifters,
be compelled to demand, extract and/or extorting bribery as payment to facilitate illegal
activities.
Jagdeo at his press conference disclosed that several law-enforcement agency officials revealed
being forced to stand down on several major illegal activities during the APNU+AFC 2015-2020
rule.

The former President said it’s public knowledge that APNU has connections with cocaine
dealers, resident in neighbouring Suriname.
These, Jagdeo claimed, supplied weapons to local criminals when the country was gripped by a
massive crimewave after five prisoners staged a daring escape from the Camp Street jail in the
heart of the city on ‘Mash Day’ 2003.
They used the backlands of Buxton on the East Coast Demerara as their hideout, and from there
unleashed a massive reign of terror which left dozens of people dead. Jagdeo was then the
country’s President and Granger branded this dark period the time of ‘Troubles’.
“Those (living in Suriname) were the same people who were supplying weapons to the criminals
here,” during the ‘troubles’ Jagdeo revealed.
He credited his government anti-crime vision for the two recent major drugs busts, emphasising,
it never would have occurred if the APNU+AFC were in office, because of their ties to several
key characters linked to the illegal narco enterprise.
“The guy that we are looking for with the drug shipment to Belgium was closely connected with
several leaders of APNU. You would recall ‘Big Head’ (Shervington Lovell) who was recently
convicted, when he opened his business, check the people who were the main guest of honour at
the opening of his facilities, you check that,” Jagdeo encouraged.
“We are now in a major clean up mood of the country,” the VP told reporters.
Jagdeo is sensitive that successive PPP/C coalition governments have been stained by allegations
of involvement in the criminal drug underworld, and the recent resurgence of drug busts linked
to Guyana with his party in power, has not been comfortable for the Irfaan Ally administration.
But he dismissed the allegements as myths and deliberate peddling falsifications that there has
been an increase in drug running in the country, explaining under the APNU+AFC many of their
illegal drug activities were undetected, creating the illusion of a slide in activities here.

“I believe that the drug dealers didn’t become good boys for the past five years under APNU. I
believe that it was going through undetected, and I am extremely pleased that with the
enforcement actions that the police, working in collaboration with other countries over the last
several months, you have had three of the largest busts…with tons of cocaine seized,” Jagdeo
said
“We have seen under our administration the police effecting some of the largest busts. So, I
believe that there were some forces under APNU+AFC that were closely aligned to protect
drug dealers. I believe that sincerely based on their record,” the VP reiterated.