“I wouldn’t put it past Govt to watch us” – Jagdeo

– says it shows how desperate Govt is

One day after former Housing Minister and Opposition Member of Parliament (MP) Irfaan Ali was arrested at his residence and slapped with 19 politically trumped-up charges, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo says he would not put it pass the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) majority coalition Government to be monitoring them.
Ali was arrested sometime after 04:00h on Wednesday by a vanload of ranks and taken to the Guyana Police Force’s Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) Headquarter, where the charges were instituted against him. He was subsequently arraigned but the former Housing Minister was placed on self-bail by Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan when he made his appearance at the Georgetown

Magistrates’ Courts.
On Wednesday, Attorney General Anil Nandlall told reporters outside SOCU that they believe they are being watched.
“A number of us are under surveillance… [and] we know that our phones are tapped. This has been going on for quite a while,” Nandlall stated, as he questioned how the ranks knew where to find the former Housing Minister, who was picked up from a residence in Georgetown and not his publicly-known Leonora, West Coast Demerara, home.
During his weekly press briefing at his Church Street, Georgetown office on Thursday, Jagdeo disclosed that he was told by Nandlall that the officers at SOCU were heard saying that they wanted to catch Ali before he went to exercise, hence they turned up at his residence in the wee hours of the morning.
“I found out that [Ali] does go to exercise [that early] so it meant that they must have been watching him, that they must have been watching his behaviour and patterns and so on to know to show up there early in the morning… This is pretty dangerous… [but] knowing this Government, I would not put it past them to have a unit watching everybody in the [People’s Progressive Party] PPP and another set watching and another set watching their own MPs too because they’re worried about the no-confidence vote. So they’re probably watching everyone,” the Opposition Leader posited.
Jagdeo also disclosed that during the recent Government campaigning period, there were special branch operatives at all of the meetings he attended to

address. This, he asserted, is a not just another act of oppression but also a high level of desperation being displayed by the coalition after they got a rude awakening with the results of the recently concluded Local Government Elections, which the PPP won most of seats at critical municipalities and Neighbourhood Democratic Councils, as well as the pending no-confidence motion brought on by the Opposition.
“If they can show up surreptitiously by stealth in the night, they can do anything too. That is what people keep saying to me because they’re desperate to hang on to power. They can try to get one of our members locked up or anything happens, god forbids, to one of our members so that they don’t show up for the no-confidence vote. And now they’re even worried about the Appropriation Bill that it could be voted against. So I will not put anything past APNU,” he contended.
According to the Opposition Leader, every time the officer at SOCU needed the former Housing Minister, he had gone in – and not just him, but any PPP member.
“You know they can call you in and people would have gone in. But to show up at this home at 4am, they wanted to send a message. This is the vindictive nature of the Government to go and arrest him at 4am in the morning. He could have easily gone there any time during the day, they could have said show up there for 7am or 8am but they had to make that point,” Jagdeo stated, adding that they may also even be tapping their phones. Nevertheless, the Opposition Leader told reporters that his party will remain steadfast and will not succumbed to their pressure, bullying or oppressive tactic. On this note, he assured that Ali will remain Chairman of the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
“If we succumbed to these issues, we wouldn’t have people in Parliament. We would have had to take out four or five people already, and I think that’s the plan of APNU. I’ve heard that they are even trying to influence our selection of candidates. But it’s not APNU who’s going to select our candidates or anyone else. It’s the PPP who’d select the candidates and we will ensure that whoever that candidate is they will carry out and fulfil every promise we made to the people of this country, we will reverse a lot of these hardship policies…” Jagdeo posited.
The 38-year-old executive member of the PPP, has been touted as one of the front contenders for the Party’s leadership.