…in GECOM
Tag teams are a standard feature in professional wrestling. The trick is to have a “fresh” partner ready to enter the ring to wallop the other wrestler when he’s down. It’s not incidental that professional wrestling is pure theatre with the moves and even the results, totally fixed. Tag teams simply double the variations of the fix.
Not endowed with professional wrestlers in Guyana, the PNC-led coalition has introduced the tag-team tactic in the operations of GECOM to pummel the PPP into oblivion, as they struggle for the Constitution and the courts to be obeyed to hold elections by March 19 – three months after their historically successful no-confidence vote. The two members of the PNC tag-team are Chairman James Patterson and CEO Keith Lowenfield.
Ex-GDF officer Lowenfield has been a fixture at GECOM for years – holding the Dep CEO position under Gocool Boodhoo. He surreptitiously played a key role in ensuring the hiring practices to staff the Secretariat tilted the scales in favour of the PNC. In electoral matters, the devil invariably lies in the details, controlled by the bureaucracy! But Boodhoo was there to head Lowenfield and the staff off at the pass! The Chairman, Justice James Patterson, of course, was unilaterally appointed as PNC leader David Granger’s ‘fit and proper’ candidate to form the tag team with Lowenfield, now elevated to the CEO’s position. With Patterson, Lowenfield and the GECOM staff all in the PNC camp, they’d hit the elections Trifecta!!
If there were any Pollyannas out there who questioned the denunciations of Granger’s arrogant action on Patterson, your Eyewitness is sure their rose- coloured glasses have misted up after December 21. After all, if since 1980 the Constitution had pronounced that the effect of a no-confidence motion was to precipitate General Elections in THREE MONTHS, you’d think the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) of GECOM would’ve had a contingency plan to deal with that eventuality, wouldn’t you?? Isn’t that why the Chair, CEO and Secretariat’s staff draw their (fat) salaries all year round – and not just when elections are scheduled?? And let’s not forget there was already a no-confidence trial balloon floated in 2014!!
For the Guyanese people to be told GECOM won’t be ready for elections in less than five months, is like the GDF saying they should’ve received a five-month warning to deal with a Venezuelan incursion!! And to add salt to the wound is the tag team of Lowenfield and Patterson also saying that date depends on when the latter tells the former to begin elections preparations!!
Patterson, of course, blames the “Commission”, when he has the CASTING VOTE between the PPP and PNC Commissioners!!
Like professional wrestling, it’s a fix!!
…with PNC and AFC?
The AFC’s doing its darnedest to reprise the tag team role it played after 2011 with the PNC to beat up on the PPP! Sadly, even if PNCites wanted to, the “dead meat” AFC wouldn’t even have the energy to stretch out its hand to be tagged!! It’s a “shad, shad situation” as one local comedian said!! Take the Region Three event the PNC labelled as “opening up its Region Three Congress Place” – but had to bus in hundreds of faithful all the way from Linden.
Khemraj Ramjattan showed up to fan-boy Granger and was so cloying, even PNCites cringed! After all, they all knew Ramjattan was trying to pip Nagamootoo for the PM’s slot – devalued as it was! But they also know that neither he nor his erstwhile buddy Nagamootoo are in the running. The PNC’s looking for fresher, younger meat!!
And Ramjattan’s bid to project a “big and bad” image by holding that meeting under the “weaponised bottom house” didn’t help his cause.
The PNC farms that stuff out to pros!
…with City Hall
Now that the Local Government Commission’s begun implementing the Kennard CoI recommendations on the cesspool of City Hall, Local Government Minister Ronald Bulkan promptly reprimanded them for their use of funds!!
Tag teaming with the old Mayor??
