Ramotar urges new joint services heads to read DFC report
Stabroek News
June 4, 2004
The PPP seems to have softened its stance on the Disciplined Forces Commission's (DFC) report which it said earlier this year it would not be automatically bound by.
At a Freedom House press conference yesterday, PPP General Secretary Donald Ramotar deemed it required reading for the newly-appointed heads of the Police Force, the Guyana Defence Force and the Prisons Service, and urged them "to familiarise themselves with the document as a whole but more specifically with those sections that related to their respective entities."
Pressed to say if his statement was a softening of the party's position on Professor Harold Lutchman's presence on the commission, he would only say that the report is a document into which much work had gone before Lutchman joined the commission. He said too that it is a document which, in their new positions, they should look at to see what recommendations could be implemented.
Ramotar noted too that the DFC report has only been laid in Parliament and when it is debated he "will fully express his views there".
At a press conference earlier this year, the PPP objected to Dr Lutchman's appointment to the commission arguing that he had been a member of the delegation of the Trades Union Congress which appeared before the DFC and could give the appearance of bias. It said too that it would no longer be automatically bound to accept the recommendations of the commission.