Shadow Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Roysdale Forde S.C, has rejected President Irfaan Ali’s announcement the embattled Minister Nigel Dharamlall has approached him and requested administrative leave and he has granted it to him.
Forde, in a statement carried in this publication Sunday, has called for the minister to be fired, making known “rape is a criminal act and President Irfaan Ali has an opportunity to demonstrate his government is not prepared to trivialise this allegation.”
Village Voice News reached out to the senior counsel for a comment based on recent development. He told this publication President Ali is acting as though he is not the head of government, and is probably taking direction from Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, who may have advised of such a course of action. “They are protecting the minister, not holding him accountable.”
According to Forde: “First, it was not Mr. Dharamlall’s place to request administrative leave, the president should have fired him. Second, the allegation is egregious enough for the president and ministers of government to distance themselves from him and see to him being fired.” It is time they stand up and be counted defending the weak and vulnerable in society, he said.
Forde said as an officer of the court whilst he adheres to the common law principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty, this is a criminal matter, allegedly committed by a minister and he must step down or be fired, and allow for the course of legal justice to flow, unimpeded. “Administrative leave is not the way to go; Irfaan Ali must let Nigel Dharamlall go,” he countered.
Touching on the issue of the Child Care and Protection Agency carrying out an investigation on the matter, Forde said he is skeptical. According to him, Guyanese have seen enough of the trickery of the Irfaan Ali government to have confidence in any investigation conducted by them and that justice would be served.
In an earlier statement Forde said “as a member of parliament and officer of the court, I call for an independent investigation and for Minister Dharamlall to be relieved of his duties, with immediate effect, so as not to prejudice, in any way, the inquiry and findings. I also call for the support of the entire Parliament and PPP supporters to make this possible. This is not a political issue, it is not a racial issue, it is a criminal issue!”
Getting to the parental aspect of what allegedly transpired between the teen and minister, Forde said as a father it pained him to read the gruesome story of a minor being violated by an adult who should be her protector not violator. He said he would like all fathers to think were this child theirs, won’t they too have wanted justice. “By this I mean, legal justice not vigilante justice because we are a nation of laws and the laws must be respected.” This moral decline has to stop, he said, and the cessation must start from the top.
Based on messages circulating in social media, the minister is accused of sexually violating a teen from the indigenous community who was a pageant contestant. The messages tell a gruesome story of the child being raped, sodomised and forced to have oral sex, allegedly with the minister. The teen reportedly issued a statement to the Anna Regina Police Station, distancing herself from responsibility for the information circulating in the public, but notably, not the content of the information.
