Leader of the PNC/R, Desmond Hoyte, has denounced the July 3rd storming of the Office of the President by protesters, but declared that the party supported the cause of the demonstrators.
"We believe that the persons who entered the Presidential Secretariat were misguided and/or misled. No person could believe that such an act could have promoted the cause of the people. It has turned out to be a distraction and diversion from the main purpose of the march," Hoyte said.
The march was organised, the PNC/R said, to protest against joblessness, discrimination, marginalisation and victimisation by the government.
Two protesters were shot dead in the presidential complex and several others wounded. Since the invasion of OP, the PNC/R has come under heavy pressure to accept responsibility for the mayhem as it had mobilised its supporters for the march and some of its senior officials participated.
"We said we regretted it and explained that we were not responsible for the breakaway (of the splinter group which attacked OP). We did not encourage people to go into the place there. We condemn their action of going into the Office of the President," Hoyte, who is also Opposition Leader and had occupied OP between 1985 to 1992 while he was President, said.
PNC/R Chairman, Robert Corbin, said the party has completed a preliminary investigation into the events of July 3, during and after the protest march.
He stated that many of the persons who participated in the illegal march were peaceful throughout the demonstration. He recalled as the marchers got closer to Georgetown, it was noticed that some people were joining, many of them on bicycles and they had taken up the front of the procession. Corbin said the marchers observed some of them carrying out illegal acts and moved to put them out of the march.
Some of the diversions made during the march were done specifically to avoid the rogue elements who had joined in, he said. "There were people joining the march along the route obviously with a different agenda. There were some agents provocateur, we believe, who were deliberately there to create confusion and give the march a bad name," he stated.
Speaking on the role he played in the protest march, Corbin said he spoke at several public meetings leading up to the march to encourage persons to support the protest. He said he visited the demonstration at several points to check on how it was proceeding.
"In fact, I tried to bring some order at some points where I stopped in my vehicle to see that no indecent acts were being carried out and advise the marchers to obey the principles which I spoke of with them at the various political meetings," he said.
Corbin said it should be noted that all of the meetings at which PNC leaders spoke, the cardinal principles were emphasised. One was that the marchers should not indulge in any act that would give the protest a bad name, because the intention was to bring the problems of the people to the attention of the CARICOM Heads, who were meeting in Guyana at the time, and any such behaviour would not help.
Corbin said he was unaware of any member of the party who was in the vicinity of the Office of the President at the time of the incident.
The PNC/R chairman said he was in Lamaha Street when word reached him that something had occurred there and that a woman had been shot outside the presidential complex.
"Many of the marchers, at that time, wanted to rush down to the Office of the President and I was one of those persons who encouraged the persons not to break their ranks," he stated.
He said he realised that if there was an incident at the Office of the President much more damage could have been done if the thousands involved in the march descended on the area.
Hoyte declared that the party's official position had already been made public and noted the varied views on the events expressed by some of its members. "This party has rules and Rule 19 of the party's constitution says the person who articulates party policy is the party leader unless the party leader delegates that authority," Hoyte said. "If a party member has personal views of his own that is his due. That can't bind the party."
He continued: "Our party has always been a fractious party. I have been in the party for 42 years and there always have been people with a multiplicity of views. Ultimately out of all of that you get a party policy, and the rule is once the party policy is hammered out, defined, and approved by the party's central executive committee, [then] that is the party's policy. You are expected, as a disciplined person, to go along with that because these are the very persons who call themselves democrats - they want the majority voice to prevail."
Giving the findings of the PNC/R's preliminary report on the events of July 3, Hoyte told reporters that the People's Solidarity Movement (led by PNC/R member Phillip Bynoe) applied for permission to march on July 3. He noted that many marches had been held previously without incident and permission was normally granted.
Therefore, there was no reason to believe that permission would be turned down on this occasion, he said, and consequently, the PNC/R encouraged its members to participate.
Hoyte said that with no information from the police about permission, thousands of protesters moved off from the East Coast Demerara as early as 05:30 hrs. He said the plan was for them to join with participants from Georgetown, Linden and other parts of the country in Lamaha Street.
He stated that upon arrival in Georgetown, a section of the marchers branched off from the main procession along Vlissengen Road while the others remained on the original route into Lamaha Street.
He related that the breakaway section proceeded to the junction of Regent and New Garden streets where no police barriers were erected as was usually the case. The result was that several persons in the procession proceeded along New Garden Street outside the presidential complex.
Hoyte said some marchers claimed they heard gunshots and one woman who was standing in New Garden Street was shot in the head. Pandemonium broke out and some persons pushed open the gate and walked into the compound, he said. And others followed when they saw the open gate.
Hoyte said: "Everyone spoken to, however, maintained that all the persons who had entered the compound were unarmed and that many eventually voluntarily left. When most of the persons had walked out of the compound, the gate was suddenly closed and shots were fired indiscriminately in the compound. Those who were trapped in the compound ran for shelter and ended up in a room in the bottom flat of one of the buildings. It was into this room where they were huddled that a guard, who some can identify, pointed a gun through the window and shot several persons. Two died on the spot and one was taken to hospital. Later, those persons trapped in the compound were arrested by the police."
Hoyte's account differs entirely from the OP and police versions which said that the protesters burst into the compound, sacked the accounts department, threatened employees at knifepoint and robbed them. It was during this that the two protesters were shot dead and the others injured.
The police issued a wanted bulletin several days ago for Bynoe to face several charges stemming from the day's events. Bynoe is still to give himself up.
Speaking on the party's position on Bynoe, Hoyte said it should be borne in mind that Bynoe was a political personality in his own right apart from being a PNC/R member. He recalled that last year Bynoe mobilised loggers and residents of Linden and Kwakwani to protest against a number of grievances.
This resulted in President Bharrat Jagdeo having to make commitments some of which he never honoured, Hoyte said. "You have to put Mr Bynoe in proper perspective - as a political figure in his own right - who has been outside the ambit of the People's National Congress indulging in political action in the areas where he operates."
In answer to the point that Bynoe had publicly criticised the PNC/R in the past and openly backed the PPP/C government, Hoyte pointed out that history would show that persons have hopped from party to party.
He alluded to Joseph Hamilton who left the PNC/R to join A Good and Green Guyana and was now back with the PNC/R.
"Today they have one political stance tomorrow they have another, but we can't be unduly bothered about that.
That is the nature of the politics of our country," he said. "We would not say that we would necessarily exclude from our ranks a person who had attacked us in the past. He might have genuinely changed his mind."
He said that the PNC/R had welcomed in the past persons from the hierarchy of the PPP and some of the PNC/R's members have defected to the PPP.