APNU Member of Parliament Coretta McDonald has delivered one of the sharpest rebukes yet in the CCTV footage affair. In a Facebook post, she condemned Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed for allegedly drawing a 20-year-old police constable into wrongdoing. She did so without excusing the young man and without sparing a fellow opposition leader.
A voice of conscience from the opposition benches
McDonald, a trade unionist and returning APNU parliamentarian, has built her public life around working people. Her post reflects that. “Two wrongs don’t make it right, what that young man did was dishonest,” she wrote. She reserved her strongest words for the Opposition Leader, saying he was “down right out of order, irresponsible and disgraceful to have inticed the youngman to do what he did if the allegation is true.”
Her careful phrase, “if the allegation is true,” matters. McDonald didn’t rush to judgment. She asked a moral question that applies whatever the court finds: what responsibility do powerful people have toward the young people they draw into their battles?
She spoke for the family left behind. “Now a young man’s entire future is on the downside,” she wrote. She described his mother being “plunged into depression and fatigue, having to find monies to employ the services of an attorney or attorneys,” going to and from the station and then the court. She then asked bluntly whether those who benefited were “prepared to finance the journey.”
McDonald also offered a better path. The Opposition Leader claims great influence, she noted, so he could have mobilised supporters across the country to press the government to “produce the CCTV recording and bring Prem Narine to justice.” Instead, she wrote, he used the young man as “his tool… and then threw him under the bus, ohhh yes thats the HEART of LOVE for poor people.” She closed with scripture: “the love of money is the root of all evil.”
The allegations behind her post
Police arrested Constable Ryan Greene, 20, of the Command Centre on October 26, 2026. They allege that on October 23 he downloaded footage of the October 12 shooting incident at the Kitty home of Senior Superintendent Prem Narine and saved it to a flash drive on Mohamed’s instructions. They also allege Mohamed paid him G$800,000, about US$3,500, the next day. His mother, Nikita Greene, was also detained. None of this has been tested in court, and no charge has been laid against Mohamed over the payment. Attorney General Anil Nandlall has said further charges are possible.
The family has not stood alone. APNU MP Dr. Dexter Todd, who said he had been retained by the Greene family, publicly gave police a 6 a.m. deadline to release the constable and his mother or face High Court action. The court action was filed by attorney Darren Wade on behalf of the constable’s father, Randy Greene. Wade’s habeas corpus application names the Commissioner of Police and the Attorney General. It argues the pair are being held for “conspiracy to commit felony” without any felony being named, and that police published the constable’s alleged admissions before charging him, against the presumption of innocence. The High Court has ordered the State to show cause why the constable and his mother should not be released, and the matter returns for hearing on Thursday.
Analysis: why McDonald’s stand matters
McDonald’s intervention matters first because of who she criticised. In Guyana’s politics, criticism usually runs along party lines. An APNU parliamentarian publicly rebuking the Leader of the Opposition, a fellow opponent of the government, is uncommon. It reflects a principle too often missing from public life: accountability that applies to allies as well as opponents.
Taken together, the responses from within APNU are telling. Dr. Todd moved to defend the family’s legal rights, while McDonald spoke to the moral wrong done to them. Both, in different ways, put the young man and his mother ahead of the political fight.
Her post also raises a question of society and class: who carries the risk when the powerful act? G$800,000 is not a fortune that changes a family’s life. It is a few months’ pay, quickly spent. Yet the price the constable may pay is his career and his freedom. McDonald saw that imbalance clearly. The powerful can buy a vulnerable person’s risk cheaply, and when things go wrong, the consequences fall on those least able to bear them.
The same pattern appeared earlier this year, when the Guyana Revenue Authority fired six employees, including a manager, over the transfer of vehicles out of Mohamed’s name after he was sanctioned. The workers lost their livelihoods. The property owner faced no local charge. McDonald’s post asks Guyanese to notice that pattern.
There is a cost of justice too. A wealthy accused can retain senior counsel and endure a long process. A working-class family, as McDonald described, must borrow for lawyers and lose wages travelling between station and court. Equality before the law exists on paper, but defending yourself is a class burden.
Finally, McDonald’s point about the proper route deserves weight. If the official account of the October 12 incident is wrong, the country deserves the truth through open, lawful pressure and independent scrutiny, not a flash drive passed in secret. In saying so, she held both the Opposition Leader and the system to the same standard.
What comes next
The High Court will decide whether the constable and his mother are lawfully detained, and police will decide who, if anyone, is charged. McDonald has already set the test this publication will apply: whether the powerful face the same consequences as the young and the poor.
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