Political leaders who seek to politicise the recent gruesome murders of the two Berbice teens are “disgraceful” and should be rejected as they are ultimately attempting to further divide the country.
This is according to Chairman of A New and United Guyana (ANUG), Timothy Jonas, who, during a recent interview on Globespan, slammed certain politicians for using the incident to rely on “their own race-based politics to try to play tit for tat.”
“Anybody who tries to politicise this and say APNU or PPP (was responsible), those people are equally poisonous…because when you are in the backdam and you catch two youngsters…you are not concerned about who is President and who is not President, you are acting on race, you are not acting on politics.
“So don’t let’s politicise this, let us catch the people who did it, let us fix our society and let us reject the politicians who try to politicise this and divide us further,” Jonas asserted.
According to the ANUG Chairman, who is also a lawyer by profession, the police should have been able to have the confidence of the public so that they could have ventured into the villages and get crucial information that would have allowed them to solve the crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice.
“When somebody goes into the backdam, as these youngsters did, and this result happens, there is one thing left for us to do; we have to try as quickly as professionally and as effectively as possible to catch the murderers and to bring them to justice,” Jonas posited.
He argued: “what happened at Cotton Tree are hate crimes, they are race-based crimes” and the efforts by the politicians to politicise it is not in the best interest of the nation.
In what was seen as a clear attempt to gain political mileage from the tragedy, top coalition leaders, including David Granger and Joseph Harmon, on Monday, sought to cast blame on the PPP/C Government for the incident, saying that it was politically motivated.
The badly-mutilated bodies of 16-year-old Isaiah Henry and 19-year-old Joel Henry of West Coast Berbice (WCB) were discovered almost one day after they went missing. They reportedly left on Friday to pick coconuts in the backdam.
Their disappearance prompted family members to launch several search parties to look for them. After hours of searching, the badly-chopped bodies were discovered among the bushes and were partially covered in mud.
The murders have sparked outrage in the community, resulting in fiery protests, some of which have become violent, with some passersby claiming that they were robbed and beaten. Several roads have also been blocked over the past two days, preventing commuters from getting to their destinations freely.
In an address to the nation on Monday, President Irfaan Ali made a passionate appeal to the residents to express their emotions in a manner that is lawful and respectful and allow the Guyana Police Force (GPF) to carry out its duties uninterrupted.
“Whatever you do in demonstrating your emotions, I speak to you to do so in a peaceful manner, in a respectful manner…I understand the hurt,” the President urged.
The President also cautioned all Guyanese to be very careful regarding their statements and comments on social media so as to avoid the situation deteriorating.
Dr Ali expressed that it is quite unfortunate, the manner in which the two Berbice teens met their deaths and pledged that as President he will work very hard to ensure that justice is served.
He related that he spoke with the parents of the victims and assured them that his Government is committed to bringing the perpetrators of the heinous crime to justice.
Five persons have since been taken into custody including a 57-year-old man upon whose estate there were what appeared to be bloodstains, a handyman who worked with the estate owner, and his son.
