‘He has done a fantastic job’

Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan yesterday sought to dispel suspicions of a move to get rid of Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum, whom he called a “serious pillar” of the Guyana Police Force, while praising his performance. Blanhum, who heads the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), is presently on 90 days of accumulated leave and is expected to return to office in December.

Blanhum’s leave closely followed President David Granger’s declaration that the recently-concluded Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the alleged assassination plot against him had exposed serious deficiencies and weaknesses in the Guyana Police Force. Granger had also declared that he thought it was “unacceptable” to come to conclusions about the alleged plot before the completion of the investigation.

“I think it is completely unacceptable for any public official to deem the allegation or the intention of the plot to assassinate the president of any country as being inherently incredible …that a person who [was] appointed to conduct an investigation, before completing the investigation to come to such conclusions,” he said, in an apparent reference to Blanhum’s testimony before the CoI, in which he had called the allegations of the assassination plot “inherently incredible.” Wendell Blanhum