A senior member of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has urged party supporters to remain calm in the police espionage incident against the party.
Member of Parliament for the Town of St. George, Peter David has also urged non-government organisations (NGOs) and other civil groups in the country to speak out on what he describes as attempts at "provoking'' problems in country by the ruling New National Party (NNP) administration."We believe in the democratic process,'' said David who is also
the General Secretary of the Congress party.
Several executive members of the party have claimed that they carried out a Citizen's arrest on Police Officer 77 Kelon Noel
who was discovered in a next door building clandestinely recording the private meeting of the party's National Executive.
The Police Constable has since complained that he was beaten, an allegation denied by NDC.
The NDC has charged that the spying by Noel, and the subsequent police investigation in which police have questioned some of its members are political.
They are accusing the NNP government of Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell of being behind these developments.
The party's General Secretary said that NDC is "concerned about the environment being created by the actions of the government'' to spy on its meeting.
"We have called on all of our people to remain calm. We anticipate that this government is looking for some kind of pretext to do something, to take some kind of action against the NDC, recognizing the decline in the government's popularity'', he added.
David, an attorney-at-law by profession, said the NDC plans on meeting with civil groups to discuss the situation in the country."We believe civil society the churches, the NGOs, the trade unions, the business community should all become involved,'' he remarked.
"...Today it's the NDC they are spying on; today it's the NDC's meeting they are trying to infiltrate. Tomorrow, who knows, maybe the business community and churches will also be the subject of the kind of provocative action that is taking place on the part of this government'', he said.
According to David, the NDC is determined to continue its work with elections just around the corner but it's not going to be "sucked into any kind of public problems in the country''."We call on the government to desist from actions that are aimed, it seems to us, at provoking some kind of problem,'' he said.
"We are not going to be sucked in to that. We are going to maintain our calm and we call on all our supporters, all our people, to remain calm in the face of all of these difficulties'', he added.
Asked about reports that the government is planning to "get rid of half of the NDC'' before an election is called, David replied: "There are lots of NDC out there. It's going to be impossible to do that because half of the NDC will be quite a few thousand people.
"Our membership is very, very wide and our membership is solidly behind the party. We are ready and able to participate in elections. We call on the government to call the election. Call it now'', he said.
