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By Mark DaCosta- Ms. Letitia James, Attorney General (AG) of the State of New York, has announced that she will seek support among her colleagues to petition the US government to investigate numerous complaints against Guyana’s People’s Progressive Party (PPP) regime. Ms. James made the disclosure last Sunday during a Guyanese town hall meeting in Brooklyn, New York. The meeting was attended by a full capacity crowd with standees in the hall, the outer room, and on the street.
“I again, along with my Democratic Attorneys General across the country, will be calling on the [United States] DOJ (Department of Justice) as well as the Biden administration to look into allegations that have been put forward this evening,” the AG said after hearing a litany of complaints and allegations against the Guyana government from Guyanese present at the meeting. The allegations were primarily about racial discrimination. However, Guyanese at the meeting also alleged that Guyana’s government uses the legal system to persecute political opponents even as Guyana is being mismanaged.
The New York AG emphasised the need to combat racism, inequality, and class battles as well as the freedom of the press and the right to free expression. She encouraged the crowd, which was predominately made up of Afro-Guyanese, to make it plain to Guyana that [Guyanese] would not stand for racism, corruption, anti-democratic behavior, or electoral fraud.
Present at the meeting were prominent Guyanese including retired Assistant Commissioner of Police and former Chairman of the Police Service Commission, Paul Slowe, Nigel Hinds, Jason Benjamin, a youth activist, Errol Lewis, Chairman of the North American Region of the People’s National Congress Reform, and Rickford Burke, President of the Caribbean Guyana Institute of Democracy (CGID) one of the sponsors of the meeting.
Guyanese will recall the Guyana Police Force has issued at least two wanted bulletins for Mr. Burke.
In his remarks, Mr. Burke encouraged support for Democratic party candidates at the midterm elections where the national voting date is Tuesday, November 8. He said, “Only the United States government has the leverage to make sure we have equitable governance in Guyana and so we have to make sure we tell our relatives all across this country […] you have to elect officials who would represent our interest and ensure that [Guyana has] a foreign policy that is favourable to us, all of us as Guyanese.”
