ST JOHN’S, Antigua, Jun 24 2015 – The Antigua and Barbuda government has denied that it ordered the police to search the home of the former Speaker of the Parliament D. Gisele Isaac that the main opposition United Progressive Party (UPP) said was designed “to send a signal that people must be frighten of the Antigua Labour Party (ALP)”.
Police Monday searched the homes of Isaac, who is also the UPP chairman and popular radio announcer Algernon ’Serpent” Watts as they continue a probe into the Board of Education (BOE) initiated by Education Minister Michael Browne in August last year.
UPP leader Harold Lovell described the police action “as an act which will go down in the history of Antigua and Barbuda as one of those dark days when the repressive forces of the state are being used by the Gaston Browne administration to try to drive fear into the hearts of Antiguans and Barbudians”.
But Government’s Chief of Staff, Lionel “Max” Hurst dismissed the allegation insisting that the police were merely carrying out their investigations with no prompting from the government.
“They know very well that the Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party has nothing to do with these arrests or as they (are) calling them detention and whatever has resulted is a consequence of actions taken by the police in examining evidence which the police have uncovered on its own”.
Hurst said the probe relates to Isaac’s tenure as the executive secretary of the Board of Education (BoE) from 2001-2014, and that the government has no idea why Watts, who was a debt collector, was held by the police for 26 hours without being charged.
“It seems to be if there are any complaints at all about the manner in which the police have treated anyone who they have temporarily detained…those complaints can not only come before a judge, but there has been established some sort of civilian police review committee to look into police brutality and the like,” he added.
Meanwhile, government is also distancing itself from the decision to pull the plug on the UPP aligned Crusader radio station that owes the Antigua Public Utilities Authority (APUA) several thousand dollars for electricity services.
“It is inappropriate in any democracy at any time for any government to appear to be silencing the opposition,” said Hurst.
The station was taken off the air on Tuesday as callers accused the government of orchestrating the detention of Watts.
