THERE is something almost revealing about the latest chapter in the Azruddin Mohamed saga.
At precisely the moment when the courts have rejected another attempt to halt the extradition proceedings, the Opposition Leader finds himself at the centre of a fresh police investigation involving suspicious vehicles, drones and the vicinity of President Irfaan Ali’s private residence.
The facts should be allowed to speak.
The police reported that two heavily tinted vehicles were seen acting suspiciously near the president’s Leonora residence. The occupants reportedly moved away when they noticed the presidential guards. The police subsequently intercepted the vehicles and a DJI drone and cellular phones were found in the vehicle in which Mohamed was travelling. The Civil Aviation Authority has separately said that unregistered drones were discovered and warned that unauthorised drone operations in restricted or protected areas can constitute criminal offences.
Mohamed denies owning or operating the drone. Another occupant, technician Dwayne Ross, reportedly admitted ownership and acknowledged that his drone-operator licence had expired in 2023. The investigation remains ongoing and no charge has been announced against Mohamed in relation to it.
That is precisely why the police deserve to be allowed to investigate without being bullied into silence by political noise.
The Opposition Leader is not above investigation because he is an elected politician. Nor should his wealth, social-media following or political organisation create a parallel system of justice.
The timing is also difficult to ignore politically. The Mohamed family is already engaged in a protracted legal battle over extradition to the United States. The proceedings resumed this week after the Caribbean Court of Justice refused an application to keep them suspended. The defence had sought to pause the committal proceedings pending the constitutional appeal, but Chief Magistrate Judy Latchman refused to stop the matter from proceeding.
This is where the chessboard becomes interesting.
For months, the Mohamed strategy has appeared to be one of creating as many legal and political complications as possible around the central question: will the extradition proceedings be allowed to reach their conclusion?
The defence has every legitimate right to challenge the prosecution. That is democracy and due process, but repeated attempts to interrupt proceedings cannot become a substitute for answering the substantive case.
The courts have already demonstrated that they will not simply allow the process to be frozen indefinitely and now there is another extraordinary development.
Senior Superintendent Prem Narine, a prosecution witness, told the court that he feared for his life and the safety of his family following social-media activities connected to Hana Mohamed. Chief Magistrate Latchman intervened and warned that the proceedings must not become material for social-media attacks on witnesses and prosecutors. She subsequently directed that an apology be made to Narine.
That should concern every Guyanese who believes in the independence of the justice system.
A courtroom is not Facebook. A witness cannot be tried by a digital mob. A prosecutor cannot be intimidated by an online campaign and the family of a defendant cannot be allowed to transform social media into an extension of the courtroom.
This is where the Mohamed political machine has perhaps misunderstood modern politics. Facebook can create attention, but attention is not authority.
Views are not votes and followers are not evidence. Similarly, virality is certainly not justice.
For Mohamed Jnr, social media has become more than a communication platform. It has become a political weapon, a megaphone and, arguably, the principal mechanism through which his political identity is maintained.
That is why the temporary disappearance of the Mohamed page created such an interesting political vacuum.
For three days, Guyanese were spared the relentless digital theatre being the accusations, counter-accusations, outrage, personal attacks and political garbage that had increasingly become associated with the WIN political machine and its social-media representatives.
Perhaps those three days demonstrated something important and that is that politics can survive without the Mohamed Facebook machine.
The real question is whether WIN can. After all, a political party built heavily around one personality faces an uncomfortable problem when that personality loses the ability to dominate the conversation.
Who speaks for WIN? Please don’t say, Odessa!
Who sets its agenda? Who controls the narrative? Who commands its supporters when Facebook stops delivering the daily political oxygen?
This is the weakness of personality-driven politics. Traditional political parties are supposed to have institutions, policies, cadres and ideas that survive individual personalities.
Mohamed’s model has increasingly appeared to invert that relationship: the personality creates the attention, the attention creates the movement, and the movement is then presented as political power. But political power is not measured by Facebook impressions.
It is tested in Parliament, in elections, in institutions and, ultimately, in whether a political movement can survive scrutiny.
The Mohamed saga therefore resembles a chess game.
The Mohamed camp has repeatedly tried to create new positions on the board: legal challenges, appeals, constitutional arguments, political messaging and social-media offensives.
But the government and the institutions of the state do not need to win every social-media argument. They need only to keep playing by the rules.
The police investigate, the prosecutors prosecute, the courts adjudicate and the law moves forward. That is the checkmate Mohamed’s political establishment should fear most: not a Facebook ban, not a viral video and not a political insult.
Finally, it is the return of politics to institutions. If Mohamed is innocent of wrongdoing in the drone investigation, the investigation should establish that.
If the evidence ultimately reveals an offence, the law should take its course. Either way, Guyana should resist the politics of intimidation and spectacle.
The state does not need to shout louder than Mohamed. It simply needs to remain standing when the noise dies down.
And, for perhaps the first time in this extraordinary political chess match, the board appears to be getting smaller.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.