Further reporting on this week's Cabinet session, he said the Government was concerned too that Magistrates seem "unduly unsympathetic and unresponsive to the efforts of the law enforcement agencies in having dangerous criminals removed from the streets and (from further) contributing to the carnage on our homes...and villages".

Luncheon announced that Cabinet members "have been identified now with specific responsibilities in communities and in specific sectors...to work assiduously to (1) counter the effects of the continuing violence and the abuses to which the Guyanese people have been exposed and (2) to put in place mechanisms to prevent or to reduce the possibility of an extension of this violence and some of the factors contributing to the violence".

Police Constables Ramphal Pardat and Outar Kissoon, and Essequibo teenager Balram Khandai were brutally killed by a group of heavily armed men after midnight Sunday, following a number of robberies and an attack on the Rose Hall Police outpost.

Some 12 men reportedly landed by boat on the coast in the area and fled by the same means after the two-hour rampage.

Luncheon said the attacks were perpetrated by men who were well-armed, organised and informed, adding that the planning that went into the outrage had not been detected by Police.

"Our intelligence did not provide us with the merest inkling that an outrage of such a magnitude was being planned and was going to take place at that time", he conceded.

He said that like the July 3rd invasion of the Office of the President, last Sunday's events reflected an assault on constitutional authority.

The actual assault, and the place and time of its execution, was one of the basis for the Government's assertion that the attack was a "political crime", Luncheon said.

"We must concede that we are dealing with a fairly well organised, well-oiled machinery led by people with some skills", he said, adding that it would be foolhardy to ignore the political motive behind the attacks given the location and the Congress of the governing party.

The People's Progressive Party (PPP), the main partner in the governing PPP/Civic alliance, held its 27th Congress over the weekend at the J.C. Chandisingh Secondary School at Port Mourant, nor far from Rose Hall.

Luncheon said the PPP had its own security arrangements for the Congress and these were "heightened" by Police.

He also said that the magistracy at this time seemed not to be supporting the Police in their bid to "isolate from our population people" who have been linked to the February 23rd prison escapees and bandits.

Asked for concrete evidence, Luncheon said that a case in point was that the persons arrested for storming the Office of the President on July 3rd "are back on the road again" having been sent off on bail.

He said this was not a new phenomenon, as in the past, "many people who ought not to have been released", have been released on bail.

He said the Government would have expected that given the peculiar crime situation at this time, the magistracy would have been a bit more supportive of the Police.

A group of illegal protesters stormed the Office of the President complex on July 3rd and this was followed by a flare-up of violence, including looting and burning stores and attacks and robberies on people on Georgetown streets.

Two of the protesters were shot dead in the assault on the Office of the President.

President Bharrat Jagdeo on Tuesday met delegations from the Guyana Council of Churches and the Guyana Bar Association, the Private Sector Commission and the Guyana Trades Union Congress and discussed the current security situation and other issues.

The PPP has said also that the attacks at Rose Hall were "politically motivated".