Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance Gail Teixeira has rejected allegations of discrimination and corruption leveled against the Guyana government at a meeting in New York organized by the Rickford Burke-led Caribbean Guyana Institute of Democracy (CGID).
Burke and his supporters have accused the government of maladministration, racial discrimination, and extra-territorial application of cybercrime laws to go after critics.
At the meeting, New York Attorney General Letitia James vowed to mobilize support among colleague Democratic attorneys general countrywide to ask the federal government to look into the allegations.
However, Teixeira charged in a statement issued late Monday that Burke’s “one-man organization” continues to spread racist propaganda.
She insisted that the records show that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government has brought economic and social development through people-centered policies and programs targeting the poor and vulnerable, as well as constitutional and parliamentary reform.
“Unfortunately, a few local officials in the USA who rely on the electorate of Brooklyn appear to have fallen prey to . . . racist propaganda,” Minister Teixeira said, charging that the event on Sunday was an attempt by Burke, a political activist and community organizer in the US, to rehabilitate his image following cybercrime allegations leveled against him.
She charged that the same people making unfounded allegations against the current administration had stood by silently while the previous A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance for Change (APNU/AFC) administration sought to remain in office after losing the March 2020 election; had the highest number of court rulings in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on constitutional violations; discriminated against communities that did not vote for them during their five-year tenure of office; and terminated many Indo-Guyanese working in the sugar industry and public service.
Lashing out at one of the other speakers at the town hall meeting, former Assistant Commissioner Paul Slowe, she said he was suspended as chairman of the Police Service Commission because he refused to appoint senior police officers recommended by the then police chief, 90 percent of whom were Afro-Guyanese.
“Why didn’t these local elected officials call out Slowe for holding back the upward mobility of many of his fellow Afro-Guyanese senior officers in the Guyana Police Force?” Teixeira questioned.
“It is rather uncharacteristic of these local elected officials to reject hearing both sides; a few have been formally and informally invited by the Government to examine the facts but have instead rebuffed these overtures.
“However, assuming they have no wish to meet with the elected representatives of the Guyanese people, they are capable and competent with staff that can do their own fact-checking just by following the media – the majority of which is privately owned in Guyana – government websites, reports of international organizations such as the World Bank, IMF and IDB, statements by members of the diplomatic corps, and records of Guyana’s judiciary,” she added.
Minister Gail Teixeira insisted that the government is not afraid of the facts.
“We are managing our country effectively, and doing so transparently,” she said, pointing out that the ethnic composition of the three branches of government – the executive, legislature, and judiciary – “demonstrate a level of ethnic diversity not seen in the United States or other developed countries, even though we are a country of minorities”.
Gail Teixeira insisted that Guyana is “moving forward rapidly as never before, in a progressive and transformative direction including all people regardless of race, class, geography, gender, religion or any other characteristic under the ‘One Guyana’ vision”.
CMC/
