Why the intellectualizing of the prisoner status of the Leader of the Opposition when the glaring issue is the use of civil resources to deprive the him of his freedom with contempt and at will ?
Why the academic fluff to smokescreen what’s visibly State agression?
Nobody has said he is a political prisoner. And if they have, we are willing to wager that it was not said observing the academic definition of the term.
There is always a tell when a politician decides to juxtapose academia against raw interpretation. The opinion expressed in the public square is what is visibly true.
Sentiments run the gamut of personal vendetta and use of the Police Force, that is vested with the monopoly of arrest and detention, to be used in the interest of public safety.
If the repeated ‘catch and release’ of the Opposition Leader, Mohamed, falls within the scope of these parameters, there may be reason.
We don’t know. We can only read what the various Government documents say the Force should be doing and try to figure out the propriety of the action.
And that’s when we look to politicians whose obligation, by virtue of election, is to evaluate and advise if there is use of the Force in a manner that is counterproductive for its purpose to the citizens.
We’re grateful to hear from Politicians, especially those who are battle tested and have a solid resume of practice and academia.
But why the excess explanation on the meaning of Political Prisoner when, from our layman’s perch, he’s a Prisoner of Politics??
Could be that the Doctor is conflating personal knowledge interpretation with the established purpose of the Police Force.
He says, throughout his opinion piece, that Mohamed’s personal dealings with the ruling Party makes him privy to information that may be sensitive to the PPP Leaders.
That sounds like use of the police for a private and not public purpose which rules out the need for the Political Prisoner analysis.
Abuse of authority is what this reads like…not political imprisonment at all, especially since the Doctor notes that Mohamed is not being “prosecuted because of his political advocacy or criticisms of the government”.
He goes on to say … “but because of his personal dealings and what he might eventually disclose about individuals with whom he was previously associated”.
This awakens curiosity into why the tedious differentiation, why the time to deplatform him from political prisoner to possible victim as if it’s his fault that he is a victim.
And, we’re not lobbying here for the person that is the Opposition Leader.
We’re concerned about the office to which the subparts of the Opposition are attached and are collectively diminished by the frequent and ad hoc removal of its Leader.
We’re even more uneasy because APNU includes the Peoples National Congress.
This was dismantled by the poor stewardship of Leader Norton without this fervent and strident response from the Doctor, or from the party’s other academically and professionally qualified members.
We’re not suggesting that their priorities are misplaced.
But, we’ll admit that this level of energy, concentrated on the Leader that displaced the Party from its historic place in the Opposition, would make the current focus on Mohamed ring less rancorous and subjective, in our opinion.
It’s always informative to read the deep dives of the Doctor. They reveal, one way or other, APNU’s priorities.
And this comparatively swift effort to categorize Mohamed’s prison type is a meticulous differentiation to place Mohamed in the right group…as determined by the Doctor.
A prisoner is a regular criminal who broke the law because of civic deviancy. A political prisoner is person who defies Government through speech intended to inflame dissent, actions designed to challenge what is perceived as unfair and organizing public sentiment around disrupting government practices.
The latter tends to define public good and comes with an imputed social elevation that makes him more a leader than a criminal.
Hard not to see why the effort to ensure Mohamed is placed in the lesser category would be undertaken.
And herein lies some competition and antagonism that demotes a united Opposition to a mere notion.
The Doctor, we’re sure, is familiar with the concept of intraparty warfare and why there is preference to do battle outside of the organization than within. The dynamics of alienation, loss of friends and personal standing induce a paralysis that condones a slack leader.
The psychology of camaraderie supersedes moral decency and the fight with an external foe tends to demonstrate battle readiness except it’s the wrong battle and wrong enemy.
Categorizing Mohamed, while under the thumb of a Leader whose political infamy is assured, is the kind of cowering convenience that becomes one’s burden when they trade character for the trappings of political relevance.
Berating others, when one’s leader is an abomination at best, is really cheap cover for a self-serving decision to ignore institutional rot for malignant benefit.
And if, what appears to be an unusual sequence of frequent incarceration followed by release targeting a specific individual, is difficult to be described as harassment, then the doctor, alarmingly, has abandoned his public service and settled for some malignant benefit.
It was never about the prisoner status. It was always about the concentrated use of the nation’s Police Force to imprison a citizen with frequency that smells like irregularities.
The Doctor, we’re sure, knows this.
