The Alliance for Change (AFC) in a blistering critique of the People’s Progress Party (PPP) Government and other state agencies into the allegation of rape by former minister Nigel Dharamlall against a minor makes the shame greater than the exoneration of said minister.
The party, in a statement, said it notes with maximum worry the PPP’s high regard for damaged goods, Dharamlall. Questioning why senior leaders of the PPP make the claim Dharamlall is still an asset remains shocking, the party speculates whether this is because he knows so much business by his comrades who would not want to vex him to spill any beans.
A few weeks ago, social media lit up with text messages purportedly sent by a female minor of the indigenous community who detailed a shocking encounter with the minister who sexually brutalised and robbed her of her innocence. The incident reportedly happened last December. The 16-year-old, last year, was a contestant in an indigenous pageant and was sponsored by the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, which Dharamlall had responsibility for.
After clamouring for the minister to resign or be fired, last week President Irfaan Ali said the minister offered his resignations as minister of government and member of parliament.
Calling for Dharamlall to be expelled from the party. The AFC is demanding senior leaders expel Dharamlall from the party, apologise to the victim and the entire Amerindian community for the heinous actions of their colleague.
No doubt the shame is greater than the exoneration but circling the wagon around such a liability, clearly does not resolve this sordid affair, the party pointed. “It has shattered the very fabric of the state institutions concerned with investigating sexual offenses on young persons.”
Our modern Sexual Offences Act is made to look so primitive, much out of Jurassic Park in its application to the matter at hand, the party said in chiding the government, Director of Public Prosecutions and Guyana Police Force who many said have botched the case.
In apparent loss of confidence in the local authorities, the AFC has demanded an internationally reputable set of experts, preferably from the United Nations Human Rights or Rights of the Child Committee to be invited as urgently as possible to enquire into this debacle.
The entire matter the party said has left so much bitterness and outrage in all Guyana, and lessons must be learnt, and recommendations made to never again allow such a crime to go unpunished.
Challenge the government to act, the AFC said, “not to commit to an enquiry of this quality will reveal what the PPP and its government has become.”
