GEORGETOWN, Guyana — Last evening’s ceremonial opening of the 23rd Summit of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) in Guyana was upstaged by a violent anti-government demonstration that resulted in two shooting deaths and the wounding of six others by police outside the presidential complex on Vlissengen Road in this capital city.

Two of the wounded were reported to be in critical condition last night at the Georgetown Hospital.

A statement from the office of President Bharrat Jagdeo said it was “unprecedented and must be seen as a step by the Opposition People’s National Congress (PNC)/Reform to assassinate the president and remove the elected People’s Progressive Party (PPP)/Civic government from office…”.

President Jagdeo was not at his office at the time of the invasion and shooting incidents as he was attending the closing session of the Civil Society Conference on “The Way Forward” for Caricom, about four miles away at the Ocean View Hotel.

However, if the planned illegal march and related violent clashes and burning of business places were intended to force a cancellation of the official opening of the Caricom Summit, they failed to achieve that objective.

Police Commissioner Floyd McDonald, who described the demonstrators as “participating in an illegal march”, said while he could confirm the two deaths, he was not in a position to say exactly how many people were wounded, nor had there been any official identification of the dead.

He said police permission was applied for by Phillip Bynoe (a former parliamentarian of the main opposition PNC) for a protest march and that permission was denied on the ground that “the police are sufficiently stretched out for the Caricom Summit and it is an inappropriate time”.

While the police were responding to the invasion of the presidential complex by a group of about 50 people who were part of an estimated 1,000 demonstrators, shouting anti-government slogans, another group set fire to a car and rolled it into a store that was earlier looted, causing it to go up in flames and spread to a nearby store filled with clothing and other materials on Regent Street. This street is one of the main shopping areas in the heart of Georgetown, famous for its wooden buildings.

Units from the Georgetown Fire Service struggled to bring the raging flames under control as tension mounted in and beyond the city of feared renewal of ethnic/political violence.

But the high-profile presence of the security forces helped to ease the tension.

The ceremonial opening of the 23rd Caricom Summit went ahead as scheduled.

PNC general-secretary Oscar Clarke was not available for comment. The Observer was told that he had already left for the official opening of the Caricom Summit and that no statement had been issued by the party. A response is, however, expected from the PNC today.

However, the governing PPP, in condemning the attack on the Presidential complex, claimed that the PNC could not escape blame for what happened there and other incidents in the city.

The clash of the police and protesters at the presidential complex of summit host, President Jagdeo, followed an early morning march from the East Coast village of Golden Grove, 16 miles out of Georgetown, by a recently formed and little-known group that describes itself as the People’s Solitary Movement (PSM).

This is the group on whose behalf Bynoe had applied for permission to lead his anti-government march for justice and against discrimination and other claims.