People’s Progressive Party MPs behaved in a disorderly manner − hoisting placards, bellowing noisily and disrupting the President’s speech in the National Assembly on 2nd November 2017. In so doing, they contravened the Public Order Act making it an offence for: ‘…anyone who, at a lawful public meeting, acts in a disorderly manner for the purpose of preventing the transaction of business for which the meeting was called together.”
PPP mobs, including MPs, menaced Government Ministers, threatening to overturn one Minister’s vehicle, trailing and hollering behind another Minister, shoving into the Pegasus Hotel and screeching loudly during the President’s speech at the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association’s presentation on 19th September 2019. By this behaviour, they caused ‘public terror’ thereby contravening the Summary Jurisdiction(offences) Act which makes it an offence for: “Everyone who, in any public way or public place, or in any theatre, court-hall, lecture-room, or any place of public entertainment, or instruction, of whatever kind, or being unlawfully in any place not public, wantonly does any act with intent to cause terror to any person or persons.”
The PPP General Secretary previously had to answer charges for allegedly contravening the Representation of the People’s Act by making statements which could “…result in racial or ethnic violence or hatred among the people”. He also had to be interviewed by the police for offensive and inflammatory statements, contravening the Racial Hostility Act, by making a statement that “… willfully excites or attempts to excite racial hostility or ill-will against any section of the public or against any person on the grounds of their… race by means of words spoken in a public place”. He was cleared of all allegations, however.
Former President David Granger, speaking on the programme – The Public Interest – warned that hooliganism – such as disorderly behavior, public brawling and bullying when congregating in crowds − was part of the PPP’s political culture. That Party’s campaign − of verbal violence urging supporters to “…chase…government officials” from their villages and, of physical violence in the streets – created a tense and toxic atmosphere.
By deploying large mobs on the street, choreographing the disruption of the President’s address inside the Hotel together with the GMSA’s curious choice of 19th September 2019 that seemed to be synchronised with the Guyana Elections Commission’s uncanny disclosure of the timeframe for elections to be held – were an astonishing coincidence!
The PPP contrived the ‘No-confidence Motion’ on 16th November 2018, ninety-six hours after reviewing the recent Local Government Elections results. The PPP verbalized the notorious “…chase them out” threat at Babu Jaan three months later. The PPP laid siege to the Pegasus Hotel where it unleashed the vulgar, vociferous disruption of the President’s speech on 19th September 2019.
The PPP fomented disorder in the District No. 4 command centre on 5th March 2020. The next day, 6th March, PPP’s campaign of hooliganism climaxed in ‘day of wrath’ when mobs wreaked a reign of rural terror in a series of sixteen simultaneous assaults on school children, citizens and policemen in four regions.
The former president expressed the opinion that the PPP’s proclivity for verbal violence in the form of racial remarks aggravated ethnic tensions, eroded social cohesion and provoked public revulsion.
Physical violence in the form assaults on the ministers and attacks on schoolchildren engendered disillusionment and despondency which, taken with threats “…to take control of every village, including Afro-Guyanese villages” – exceeded everyday political discourse by exploiting prejudices and parochialism that could degenerate into public terror. The current hostile environment and political divisions are direct consequences of PPP’s hooliganism over a long period of time.
