… GECOM
Just when your Eyewitness is ready to throw up his hands in disgust and growl, “Fyah on dem”, there appears an individual who does the right thing and ignites a flicker of hope that all is not lost for Guyana under the battering ram of the PNC in its obscene quest to hold on to power. Asked by Lowenfield for an opinion on the recently-departed (but not mourned) illegally-appointed GECOM Chair Patterson’s order that H2H registration should begin tomorrow, the aptly-named GECOM in-house counsel Excellence Dazzell didn’t pull any punches.
She replied that to follow Patterson’s directive would place GECOM in contempt of the CCJ’s definitive orders of June 18. Those orders, of course, are what the PNC and its myrmidons have been playing ducks and drakes with to avoid their clear and unambiguous import: elections by Sept 18!! No if, ands, or buts about that!! Once the order was given, Caretaker Granger was constitutionally required to issue a proclamation declaring that date as the date for elections.
For Granger to pass the ball to GECOM to set the election date is to place the cart before the donkey! The mandated date to be set by the Caretaker President – Sept 18 – can only be changed by GECOM if they comply with Art 162 (2). To wit, after consulting with the PM and Opposition Leader, they would have to show that elections on that date would be accompanied by “danger or serious hardship”. Up to now the illegally-appointed Patterson and the PNC Commissioners have been agreeing with the delaying ploy of the PNC that the present list is irretrievably flawed and this presumably would pose a “danger” to “credible” elections.
But this is where Excellence Dazzell comes in. She’d already shown that the present list can be sanitised and updated to address all the claims of the PNCites – “disenfranchisement of youths” and names of the dead on the list – but was slapped down by Patterson, who said he hadn’t asked her. How dare she express an opinion? Well, here she’s gone and done that again – but this time after being asked by CEO Lowenfield! She pointed out that in view of the CCJ’s order, the most expeditious method to clean the list must be used to satisfy the specified date – and this was the Claims and Objections route!!
She also pointed out that the rushed H2H exercise would impact adversely on an accurate list and should be halted since it would lead to more disagreement, confusion, and court interventions. But we know that “accuracy” of the voters’ list is just a red herring, don’t we??
When this fails, there will be new delaying tactics!!
…SARA Investigator
Well, mout’ open and story jump out!! This time about the sanctimonious Eric Phillips of ACDA fame who denounced the PPP for playing fast and loose with the rules concerning the public weal, but was uncovered as playing both ends against the middle on ethics. Imagine this man was appointed as the LEAD investigator of SARA on the award of some oil blocks by then President Ramotar – in which there were alleged hanky-panky – but didn’t tell his boss Clive Thomas that he and others from the African Business Roundtable had applied for their own oil block!!
Up to now he’d been insisting that since the oil block hadn’t actually been awarded (yet?), there was no conflict of interest!! Thomas tartly pointed out that for a man who constantly boasted he’d interned at the White House, how come he didn’t know even if there was an APPEARANCE of a conflict, he shouldn’t have taken the job!!
…poverty pimp
But that wasn’t the only contradiction. The fella claimed he’d jettisoned the ABR – to help marginalised Africans – at the time he and his cohorts from that organisation formed ABR Oil and Gas.
Yet he’d written letters to the press long after the latter entity was launched, describing himself as an Executive of ABR!!
