The continuous arrest of the Opposition Leader by a government defaces the constitutional role of the Office of the Opposition.
Whatever the offenses are, the frequent apprehension and detention reads more like a tactical show of power with overhanging threats.
The democracy embedded in the bowels of the Constitution seems at odds with the frequent ensnaring of this single victim which contradicts its foundational principles.
And all that translates to harassment and targeting, for those of us who may not be as interpretive as the leaders reading the rights of a political opponent as ‘arrest and harassment, at will’.
Constitutionally, Guyana is still a Democracy, we’re thinking. There are still Western embassies resident in the nation. They wouldn’t be in countries seen as closed dictatorships or authoritarian regimes…except the ones deemed especially critical like China and Saudi Arabia, say.
What looks like open political suppression with the hyper focus and detention of an elected political official, somehow, seems incongruent.
Maybe these Embassy opinions on the practice of Democracy are influenced by the Mr. Mohamed’s criminal record with the United States. But he remains an elected official in the Government of Guyana and is duty bound to both, the capacity and constituents that come with the portfolio.
And here is where it gets rudimentary.
The Opposition is a multiparty entity. Mr. Mohamed’s Party won the largest number of seats. Under the structure, the other Parties are subordinate to him and his entity.
We’re not aware of any structural Opposition establishment amongst the entities. We’re not aware if they ever sat with each other, at all, to determine strategic distribution of talents.
What we know is that Mohamed is one-third of a Three- Entity Opposition and disruption in this jointed arm of Government renders it functionally impotent.
We’re not saying the multi-bird, kill- with -one stone idiom is applicable. But it sure sounds like the frequent removal of the elected Opposition Leader has the potential to stymie any collective operational input.
Sabotage, you asked?
It’s hardly a strategy when the collective Opposition hasn’t offered anything we can point to by way of functional check, balance or analysis proposals, in response to the ruling Party.
Asserting that ‘APNU condemns’ is the hollow reactive to register push back when it is, in fact, merely the equivalent of marking present. And, that’s just as insignificant as demanding a detailed explanation of some plan of action.
The point is, there’s a direct correlation to the continued extraction for incarceration of the Opposition Leader from his elected office and the service he has rendered while in office.
And if the goal is to point to the precious little accomplished by the collective Opposition, one year in, it cannot be disassociated from the constant trauma of impending arrest and related absence from place of duty of the Leader.
The question becomes where is the collective call of foul from the other parts of the Opposition on the frequent arrest of the Opposition Leader?
This is not about supporting him or his Party. It’s about fighting for the survival of their entities which are tied to his presence by virtue of constitutional rank. To think that silence is beneficial to the other parts is to misunderstand the connection.
When multiple oppositions fail to realize they are inextricably entwined, irrespective of ideology, then they are on the path to failure. The assessment made is generally about the effectiveness of the Opposition, as a whole and failure is imputed to them as a collective not a single entity.
The frequent arrests of the Opposition Leader impacts the Constitutional check and balance of the ruling arm of government. Every arm of the Opposition should be highlighting this as information for their constituents.
It’s not a favor to the Opposition Leader. It’s a duty to themselves.
It’s also a message to the ruling Party that their frequent catch and release of the Opposition Leader is a disservice to all constituents…including those of the ruling Party.
And we’re not proponents of special favor to politicians who break the law.
Democracies are practitioners of the Equal Accountability Principle. All violators of law, including those in the ruling arm of government, should be subject to the penalties of the laws broken.
If the elected Opposition Leader faces legitimate criminal charges supported by evidence, the rule of law commands that he faces due punishment.
It’s the ongoing catch- and -release that adds some personal vendetta to its appearance.
And, the fact that it derails what should be an effective leading Opposition Party combines some insidious purposeful motive to deploying the State’s arrest machine for, seemingly, personal gain.
It’s not that this is some novel practice devised by the ruling arm of government. We’ve seen this fear mongering in many countries as close as Venezuela, for one.
Chavez perpetually called his country every form of democracy he could think of; from Participatory to Revolutionary, with some Protagonistic in between.
But what was he but a political marauder who suffocated his population with fear and literally starved their dreams through poverty as he controlled the oil wealth… now being siphoned by Trump’s Shield of America’s thuggery…is the opinion?
We go to India and look at Narendra Moodi who calls his country the Mother of Democracy. Yet India continues to receive citations for inhumanity as his crusade against dissent is captured by journalists across the spectrum of reporting.
We go to Pakistan which, constitutionally and officially, still calls itself a democracy. But its political operations and use of police and military force all but imprisons its citizens.
We can cite several countries in Africa but will not, since the continent has become the defacto template for Democracy backsliding unfairly… is our opinion.
Traore and the effusion of celebration of his freeing of Burkina Faso is a topic for another day.
But back to Guyana where the slippage of wheels off the rails of Democracy have become the kind of occurrence with a frequency that’s normalizing it.
We’re thinking that the foreign embassies, resident in the country in pursuit of maintaining Western Democracy, would be monitoring the use of police to detain anyone; particularly the Leader of the Opposition with a frequency that undermines its use and cross contaminates its democratic principles.
We’re wondering why the response-paralysis from Opposition member bodies.
And even as we close we’re noting the Opposition Leader who was arrested October 13 , released on bail October 16th was rearrested again October 28th and denied bail.
Constitutional governance is once again, under assault…is the opinion.
That this arrest comes with the standard Opposition declaration of disgust, is just as frequent an element in this cycle that counters all the principles and practices of the alleged exercise of democracy.
As of this moment, it should be noted that the country is effectively under one Party rule, as the Opposition, in all of its parts, remains tepid in the face of this national challenge and comfortable in its submission of this embarrassingly generic and flaccid response.
