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AIETEUR NEWS
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GECOM continues p. 23
Tuesday Edition June 16, 2020 - Vol. 13 No. 24
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Elections were credible; results can be declared . p. 3
.. . .
See executive summary of CARICOM report on pages 11-13
rejects public efforts to discredit the polls Elections credible up to ‘disastrous’ Region Four tabulation Coalition gave ‘absolutely no evidence’ of claims Created false narrative that elections were not credible APNU+AFC agents’ behaviour ‘unacceptable’ - CARICOM team
PPP won, prepare for transition p. 7
- OAS observer team tells Guyana
The Will of the People must be Respected
C
ARICOM spoke in the clearest language yesterday, Monday, June 15, 2020. It said that the results of the recount reflect the will of the people. That will must now be made to stand by a smooth transition of power as is the norm in democracies. The reports of the Organization of American States (OAS), the Commonwealth, the European Union ( EU),
the other foreign and local observers and the local independent media are unanimous in their pronouncements about the results. It has been more than 3 months since the elections. Now that the last of the observers , the Caribbean Community, has delivered its findings, it is time for the nation to move forward. The will of the Guyanese people, must be honored without further equivocation.
Following Chinese state-owned company revocationp. of lease... 13 taking over Guyana Goldfields
had threatened Papua New Guinea Govt. - Promised to bring full strength of legal team to challenge cancellation of lease
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Kaieteur News
Tuesday June 16, 2020
Kaieteur News
Tuesday June 16, 2020
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CARICOM says elections were credible, results can be declared By Kemol King
T
he CARICOM Scrutineer Team to the National Recount submitted its report to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), in which it stated that the March 2 polls were credible, and that the results of the National Recount should constitute the basis for declaration of the elections' results. The team also categorically rejected public efforts to discredit the March 2 polls, stating that it did not view these matters as materially relevant, so as to call the integrity of the elections into question. An excerpt from the report states “… nothing that we witnessed warrants a challenge to the inescapable conclusion that the recount results are acceptable and should constitute the basis of the declaration of the results of the March 02, 2020 elections.” This statement was made by the team, even as it considered the “election errors” or irregularities which occurred on poll day, of which it lists several. In this regard, the team said that it “observed no bias” in the manifestation of those errors, and that the irregularities identified are not sufficient, in their view, to invalidate the tabulation of votes at the recount. In its conclusions and recommendations section, it said “The national recount process then, despite some of its administrative failings, despite some of the minor flaws, is not an indictment of the 2020 polls and the Team categorically rejects the concerted public efforts to discredit the 2020 poll up to the disastrous Region 4 tabulation.” This refers to the tabulation of Region Four Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo, in which the results of the general and regional elections for that district were manipulated to secure a fraudulent victory for the APNU+AFC Coalition. CARICOM Ambassador to the Organisation of American States (OAS), Noel Lynch had addressed the OAS Permanent Council o n C A R I C O M ' s involvement in Guyana's National Recount. “Mr. Chairman,” Lynch
- Rejects public efforts to discredit polls - Elections credible up to 'disastrous' Region Four tabulation - Coalition gave 'absolutely no evidence' of claims - Created false narrative that elections were not credible - APNU+AFC agents behaviour 'unacceptable'
GECOM Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield
CARICOM High Level Team: [from left] Senior Lecturer at University of the West Indies, Cynthia Barrow-Giles; Commissioner at Electoral Commission of Antigua and Barbuda, John Jarvis; and Supervisor of Electoral Commission of St. Vincent and the Grenadines told the Council, “just as democracy matters to the people of Guyana, so it matters to the Caribbean Community of which the nation of Guyana is a valued member. That is why we of CARICOM regard ourselves as the most legitimate interlocutors in the Guyana situation.” Lynch had said that CARICOM has no interest in which political party wins the election, and that if each of the political parties genuinely believes it has won (as the two major parties had both claimed), they should have no fear of the recount. President David Granger had touted this statement after a visit to the Arthur Chung Conference Centre on June 7 after apprising himself of the developments at the recount venue. “I am very confident in CARICOM's ability and integrity,” the President had said, “and I'd just like to repeat what the ambassador of Barbados to Washington said, that CARICOM is the most legitimate interlocutor on the Guyana situation. I am inspired by that remark and I share the sentiment that CARICOM is the most legitimate interlocutor on the Guyana situation.” He had added “The CARICOM team is competent and I am very
confident that the work that they will do is up to international standards. And I don't disparage the CARICOM team. I'm not dismissive of their efforts. I went to a lot of trouble. I hosted the Prime Ministers of Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Vincent and Trinidad. And I would like to see that mission succeed.” Then, in an interview yesterday at State House, the President told a select group of journalists that CARICOM's presence and role in the recount cannot be construed as interference, as its role is embedded in law (the gazetted order for the recount). Speaking of the weight that should be given to the CARICOM report, Granger said “it must be considered.” 'APNU+AFC agents offered absolutely no evidence for claims, behaviour unacceptable' The CARICOM team had scathing criticisms for the agents of the governing coalition. While the team noted that much was made about allegations of migrant voters and “phantom voters”, it said that no proof was offered. In this regard, the team said that a lot of the issues coming out of the recount caused “excessive delay” making it out to be “a
political exercise, when it was to be a technical exercise”. It stated the view that “it was done with the political objective of preparing groundwork for a post recount legal challenge of the recount.” The team saw the public statements of Attorney General Basil Williams on the validity of the recount exercise as a “snub” to the CARICOM team. AG Williams, a candidate on APNU+AFC's list, had approached the media centre outside of the centre to say “our law did not cater for a
national recount”. He and another APNU+AFC candidate, Roysdale Forde, who also approached the media centre later on, had said that the recount is (continued on page 8)
President David Granger
Kaieteur News
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Kaieteur News Printed and Published by National Media & Publishing Company Ltd. 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown, Georgetown, Guyana. Publisher: GLENN LALL - Tel: 624-6456 Editor: Sharmain Grainger Tel: 225-8465, 225-8491. Fax: 225-8473, 226-8210
EDITORIAL
Gonsalves and Harmon, then Arthur
W
hat is in a name? Much as it turns out, either in support or contradiction, as was the case proven in three instances last week on positions concerning our now increasingly tense and dangerous looking elections. The sharp spat began over the more palpable and audible recount position of the coalition, and it soon extended from an on-the-ground Guyanese commander to a sitting prime minister from the Grenadines, to a former prime minister of Barbados. And in the center of all of this stands our own de facto head of state. There is Mr. Harmon, a name that should conjure instincts toward what is comforting, as in the much-needed harmony so absent in this society. If only it were so, in this most furiously heaving land, for his words and postures have steadily pointed to the disagreeable, the things that lead to the divisive, the dissonances that are the opposite of his name. it is ironic that this son f Guyana is also graced with the name of Joseph. Many should remember him from the curriculum of old: a brother betrayed, a son sold into slavery, a rescuer in a time of Pharaoh and hard hungers, still harder needs. He was there, he could have twisted the steel of recrimination against his own flesh and blood and condemned them to a devastating existence. But he didn’t, because he was about reconciling and healing, a heart filled with strains of the truly harmonizing. Oh! But if this one in Guyana were but so, too…. But, that takes a lot of man and a lot of doing in Guyana when elections are at stake, with recounts in motion and when conclusions are close. And it is of these that the incoming chairman of CARICOM, Mr. Gonsalves, spoke rather sharply to in salvoes that were of the gun, and which reversed the syllables in his name and made him live up to it. The piercing bulletlike tracers delivered by Mr. Gonsalves prompted a heavy counteroffensive from coalition leadership dodging and weaving for any cover from a spreading storm of regional scorn and the bluntest regional leadership warnings. The words are not many, but they are loaded with meaning for the coalition leadership team, and none more than the commander in chief, Mr. David Granger. The pleas are couched in the stark and ominous: do not go there. do not challengethe whole world. There was the Arthurian: “Guyana can’t withstand the fire of the entire global community.” It is relevant, it is on the right track, it comes from the right instincts. This is more than about the coalition and its electoral prospects. It is about where it is gearing up to turn its back and determined to take on the whole world in defiance of the guiding facts on the ground, the now all but fully confirmed reality. The fire of the entire global community is not to be taken lightly, not to be played clever games with as is done here, through toying with words, going back on public leadership positions committed to, and holding adversaries and a whole country at bay. This is wrong; and though it has been said a thousand times before, it is worth saying again. We say it a little differently today: President Granger, do not shepherd us down this road. It is hot, like the man from Barbados warned, with an all-consuming Greek fire that clears all in its path. Be a responsible shepherd, be the embodiment of that first name blessed with at birth. Give this country and all its peoples a chance to be reborn and to live. We urge the Guyanese Arthur to listen and to weigh what the foreign Arthur is saying to him in the direst language, as to potential consequences that are almost sure to follow, should the wrong course be embraced. We at this paper say to David Arthur Granger do not call down this fire of angered and assembled nations upon us, the people held hostage in this tortured land. This is more than about winning elections (by any means necessary). This is way beyond the issues of anyone’s legacy. Mr. President, this is about our destiny.
Tuesday June 16, 2020
Excluding sections of the press – don’t do this, Mr. President DEAR EDITOR, The report is that President David Granger banned sections of the press from a news conference he held on Sunday. Banning, even for a day or for one media gathering is wrong, and I say so respectfully to the president. Selectively banning the critical sections only of the press is even more wrong, and I say so again. And banning the questioning, critiquing, disagreeing sections of the press at this particular hour, well, there are very few things that could be more wrong than that, and of which I cannot think of today. I understand that Stabroek and Kaieteur, the Guyana Times and Newsroom were among those excluded. The first two I scan the headlines daily, with an occasional indepth follow-through. I do so, because we are so predictable as to what is
always present and unchanging in Guyana that I have heard them a million times. I do not read the Times, nor do I even know what the entity named Newsroom represents. Perhaps, I cheat myself, but I run that risk. These four agencies of the local media world have been found disagreeable and have drawn the ire of His Excellency. I detect recrimination and premeditation, which are usually underscored by malice. I think the president is, and should be, bigger than this low move. It is too much of what has been the customary in this country; it should not be his way. The four news bodies have been objectionable because they dare to disagree. I have disagreed publicly with the president for whom I voted. By this standard, then I have to be
found objectionable and disagreeable, too. That is ominous. More importantly, we cannot go on to be a progressive society, if this is how leaders react when surveying the field for who is critical and who is not. I confess to being unable to contribute as an interested citizen and concerned patriot (something which means much to me), if only the favourable and the acceptable is what finds the traction and welcome of reception. No! I object to any such restraint, mental or actual exclusion from today. This does not bode well for Guyana. It does not fit seamlessly, but only crudely and unacceptably, in my evaluation of one David Arthur Granger, the army veteran, the historian, the chess strategist, the head of state and commander-inchief. And above all of
those, the exclusion on Sunday of what may be found to be insufferable sections of the press, does not align at all with my conclusions of David Granger, the Guyanese son and citizen. It may not matter to the president, but I share something with him that I have uttered in public before, and more than a few times. I do not read the Guyana Chronicle. And this is despite the fact that parts of it is available online, and I could have readily availed myself of its paper edition, during the time when I helped at a state agency. I did not and do not, and I am a supporter, a watchful and critical one, no doubt. Perhaps that condemns me and consigns me to the rank of pariah status, too. As an outsider in this country that is not From page 5
In Support of Inclusive Government but… DEAR EDITOR, I endorse the view expressed by Prof. Kenn Danns that inclusive governance is needed in Guyana. Inclusive government must also embrace the minor parties regardless of which party wins; PPP must bring the minor parties on board. I long champion such governance structure. In reading Danns, I cannot help but notice a serious bias in his emphasis of the history of oppression experienced by one ethnic group while understating those of the other ethnicities. He notes, for example, killing of Africans but there is no mention of the Wismar Massacre or kick down door banditry or Rupununi killings, and the violence of the House of Israel. Is Danns motivated to write about and champion inclusive governance (in this and two other recent pieces) as a result of such bias? Why is it that the concept of inclusive governance only strategically reared its head when PPP is about to take office (1992 and 2020)? Why was it not championed 1966 to 1992 and 2015-20? Is Danns using inclusive governance as a cover for fraud? Don’t the votes of other groups matter? At a minimum, Prof Danns should publicly condemn electoral fraud and chastise its intellectual authors. Scholars rhetorically ask how can an incoming administration pay
heed to the words of an academic who is not prepared, on an issue of principle, to call a spade a spade regardless of one’s ethnicity and political affiliation as done by former PMs and current PMs like O w e n A r t h u r, B r u c e Golding, Ralph Gonsalves, Keith Rowley, Mia Mottley, Sam Hinds, among others. It is conspicuously noticed that Danns did not condemn electoral frauds (not even during or after his stint at UG). How can Prof Danns expect decent politicians to take note of his recommendations if he can’t make a simple gesture of condemnation of electoral fraud as other African intellectuals like Ruel Johnson and Nigel Hinds did? Also, between 2015 and 2020, he was silent on inclusive governance – that was an ideal time to goad the administration into constitutional reform for inclusive governance as I urged. Danns harped on the massive victimization of slaves, a history we all know but other groups were also severely persecuted during colonial rule and by the Burnham administration that succeeded the white masters. And he mentioned 160 AfroGuyanese were killed during the PPP tenure in office but failed to note that many died during gang and drug related encounters. He also failed to mention that some 117 Indians were
also killed during that same period. He even failed to mention that some who were killed in encounters with security forces were determined to topple the PPP government with force even invading the Presidential Secretariat. Past persecution of one ethnic group or gang murders cannot be invoked as justification for inclusive governance. As an academic, Prof Danns can be objective and give equal emphasis to the challenges faced by ethnic groups. To be taken as a serious academic necessarily requires some semblance of balance in one’s writings. ALSO, WHY WOULD HE BE SO SNIDE AS TO PRETEND HE COULDN’T REMEMBER WHO WAS THE PPP’S PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE? OR THAT ”Granger has held together a coalition of parties with widely varying views”. Pro Danns new found view on inclusive governance is being viewed by several scholars, including those who taught with him at UG, as one sided and opportunistic in that he only now promotes this concept when the party of his ethnicity has lost a democratic election. Such partisanship would not help to address the institutionalized divisiveness that he seeks to resolve via shared governance. As a political sociologist, Prof Danns needs to accept that the 2020 elections was
not a referendum on inclusive governance. It was based on the winner takes all (WTA) system as he correctly asserted. It must continue now with minor parties part of governance and then we proceed for constitutional change. Political parties and academics must not be divorced from the ethnic reality on the ground and in the outcome of this election. For the record, I read and listened to the PPP leadership on ‘inclusionary’ democracy or inclusive governance and is also in the manifesto but yet to hear the view of the coalition on the idea. I fully support inclusive governance in a plural society like Guyana. No ethnic group must be dominant over others. But we need a model to be developed and parameters before we proceed to have a meaningful discussion of it. Ideas on inclusive governance are important and must be given attention. The literature on that concept in the academic field has been growing including some of my own writings. Notwithstanding the flaws noted above, I am pleased that Prof Danns has come on board in supporting inclusive governance, a concept long overdue. I hope the parties would give serious thought about addressing racial divisiveness via inclusive governance or some other mechanism. Yours truly, Dr. Vishnu Bisram
Tuesday June 16, 2020
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Kaieteur News
Big news in Guyana DEAR EDITOR, These 2020 elections are big news in Guyana and the Caribbean. Justifiably so! But the battle cries around it, has drowned out another momentous opportunity for this nation to reconcile and repair; heal and rebuild. This nation continues to not learn its important lessons because opportunistic politicians are only interested in their personal pockets and their mansions and their pensions. It was former PPP/C Parliamentarian Dharamkumar Seeraj who once upon a time coined a phrase and I quote “it is the mansions and the pensions that cost you the elections” that referred to a previous elections loss by another political party. When one reflects on Mr. Seeraj’s message from that era, it is still apt and totally relevant today. This is exactly what has happened to Team Granger today – it is the mansions and the pensions that cost them the elections. The simplest way to understand this loss by David Granger is to look at one fact – for every vote gained by Team Granger in 2020, the combined opposition gained 3.5 new votes. So while the APNUAFC saw its vote improved by 10,720 valid votes between 2015 and 2020 in these, the mother of all elections, the combined opposition saw their lot increasing by 37,620 new valid votes, where 82% of this increase went to the PPP/C. I have never seen such a well-organized machinery as I observe in 2020 especially in the PPP/C camp. Everyone knew what he or she had to do in the PPP/C. They individually and collectively organize, mobilize and operationalize the people at
the individual and at the village level before E-Day, on E-Day, and after E-Day and all the work was distributed on a merit basis rather than favouritism. I saw a case where a long time “chatree” and his team were replaced in short order with a fresh new team of highly skilled technicians in the tabulation process, so much so that this team used the latest technology to expose and depose the MINGO FRAUD instantaneously. It was communication and strategic formulation at its best, driven by the principles of merit and competence, almost like the Singaporean model. There are several reasons for Mr. Granger losing these 2020 elections. One was that Mr. David Arthur Granger was out of touch with the most important constituents in this country – the under 35year-old, that represents some 65% of the voting population. He was a stranger to them and he became an even more aloof and distant figure to them because of his inability to hold regular press briefings. What this nation saw when Mr. Granger did rarely show himself to the nation, was an old, washed-out, uncharismatic deadwood who was uninspiring and lacked innovative ideas to confront the major anxieties of the people. His principle opponent Dr. Irfaan Ali, was more energetic, lively and has a track record of measurable successes in the Housing and Tourism Sectors and clearly was in tune with the menu of measures needed to bring new jobs and new opportunities to these key constituent – the under 35-year-old. But, more than personality paved Dr. Ali’s victory. It had to do with five strategic decisions at the
party level that were crafted by the indomitable political Tsar of Guyana, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo. The entire PPP/C elections strategy was driven by a mantra – “get back to the people”. Dr. Ali was sent immediately after the Vote of No Confidence, to visit every single Amerindian Community in this country and he did visit most if not all of them. On the other hand many communities of Guyana have never seen Mr. Granger in person, he was an illusion. Dr. Jagdeo in his cleverness realized that these elections will be won by that allimportant Amerindian vote. In a nation of minorities where Indo-Guyanese are 39%, Afro-Guyanese are 29%, Mixed Guyanese are 21% and Amerindians are 11%, the realization that the team that wins the most of that 11%, will win the elections. It paid off and the PPPC handsomely won the Amerindian community so much so, that even in the supposedly PNC stronghold of CuyuniBartica-Mazuruni (District 7), the PPP/C chopped the PNC lead in that Region from 21% in 2015 to 11% in 2020. I am convinced in my conviction that the PPP/C has a strong chance of winning the plurality in Region 7 in 2025. Secondly, Dr. Ali and Dr. Jagdeo transformed the 2020 campaign into a referendum on Granger; they kept it simple. It was about the economic welfare of the people. Unfortunately, Mr. Granger was unable to defend his record since he had so few instances of economic success. Rather his tenure was overwhelmed by consistent spates of executive laziness, massive acts of corruption and graft conducted by his underlings and a level of policy paralysis and executive indecision that
Excluding sections of the press... From page 4 unknown to me, and I have found that I am at home when such is the case. It may be among my fellow Indians because of my identification with the president; I listen and march to my own drum. It may be among the few coalition supporters with whom I rubbed shoulders, who now look at me askance because of my sometimes caustic, still careful and conservative (according to many) assessments and reactions to political positions and actions that I am sure would not measure up before ethical and principled bars held at minimal heights. I continue to stay the course, as I run the race of life. Separately, it may please His Excellency to know that I read Demerara Waves, and am even a frequent contributor, though not of late due to circumstances. The publisher tells it as he sees it and hears it. I would hope that he is not singled out in time for the same treatment meted out to those fallen from grace. Editor, what I am saying in all of this to the president is simple and summed up like this:
as a child I never bowed before peers; as a man I do not follow the mobs. Be they a coalition mob bent along irreversible lines; or an opposition mob unalterably doubled in similar twisted configuring. It is too late for some of us to be different. In saying this I trust that the president can appreciate that I have to be me, which is what he is hearing, reading and absorbing today. The president has to be himself, and if this excluding of the press is his version of ‘I gotta be me’ then I regret that and distance from such. Guyana needs to hear the sum of positions and programmes from all minds and voices, and especially the doubtful ones now. It would be confirmation of leadership wisdom and maturity that such banning is an aberration. I trust it will not be repeated. For then what remains is the falsehood and hypocrisy of all voices saying one thing only. That would be the favourable. Count me out from now, please. Sincerely, GHK Lall
mirrors the tenure of Erich Honecker, the communist leader of East Germany who was sick more than he was healthy, most of the time. Thirdly, the entire PPP/C machinery was reintegrated back into the base. At all levels, the PPP/C cadres, apologized to the base and organized them, mobilized them and operationalized them for E-Day activities so much so that to part-take as scrutineers in the 2,339 polling stations, the PPP/C had an oversubscription of over 9,000 persons willing and able to serve the party’s interest in those polling stations. Some 5,000 persons were fully trained to function for the party in the polling stations if there was a need. Fourthly, Dr. Jagdeo purged his party of the deadwood from yesterday who led the failed 2015 campaign. People like the Donald Ramotars and Hydar Allys and Clement Rohee’s were banished from the front
lines of the 2020 campaign and replaced by fresh new faces like Sonia Rodriques and Hugh Todd and Thandica Smith. He surrounded himself with people who got the job done rather than party ideologues wedded to a communist ideology that was yesterday’s news. Rather he made a major push into Washington DC using the Mercury lobbyist company, so much so, that he is now on speed dial to big names like Senator Marco Rubio who in turn, is on speed dial to Donald Trump. Jagdeo has achieved the impossible, he has reinvented the PPP/C as a pro-business, pro-western political force that is committed to the ideology of democracy in an infrastructure that is probusiness and pro-America. Our people love this American connection. So under a Dr. Ali Government, Exxon is welcomed and every other business house is now
welcomed in Guyana, once they follow the rule of law. The .PPP/C new mantra is new opportunities, with a new beginning in a new Guyana. Lastly, Dr. Ali, Dr. Jagdeo and Mohabir Anil Nandlal, took the fight directly to the front steps of the PNC and baffled them. Mr. Granger could have sworn himself into immediately office using the Volda Lawrence declaration at that time both Lowefield and Claudette were game, but he flinched. He flinched because Jagdeo out-thought him and outplayed him from day one on this campaign. He was worried about what the Americans will do. So Mr. Granger is stuck in a rut. The recount process has now confirmed that he lost and thus he is clean bowled. He is yesterday’s man with yesterday’s ideas and he has only one choice now – trod on brother; trod on! Retirement beckons! Regards, Lisa Ally
Another red-letter day is in the making DEAR EDITOR, The month of June is highly significant in our political calendar. It was on the June 16, 1948 that five sugar workers were slain at the hands of colonial police which became the catalyst for the formation of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP). It was also on June 13, 1980 that Guyanese historian and revolutionary Dr. Walter
Rodney was assassinated. These are two significant milestones in our political history which will forever be etched in our collective memory. To these must now be added, whether by coincidence or design, the long awaited declaration of the results of the March 2 poll on June 16, a historic day in its own right given the fact that it represented the first
time in our recorded history that it took so long for a declaration to be made of results of national elections. It is also the first time that an entire recount of ballots was ever undertaken. As the nation awaits the final results of the March 2 poll, another red-letter day is in the making with the anticipated declaration of the results on June 16, 2020. Hydar Ally
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Tuesday June 16, 2020
Kaieteur News
REMEMBERING WALTER RODNEY DEAR EDITOR, On June 13, the progressive and democratic forces in Guyana, the Caribbean and the wider world would be commemorating the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Walter Rodney. He was just thirtyeight years old. Indeed, he has been dead longer than the period he lived. However, the impact he had made during his lifetime still reverberates to this day. At the time of his passing Guyana was going through multiple crises; economic, social, physiological and political. The PNC dictatorship was becoming more oppressive and brutal. It had already ‘graduated’ to using murders as a political tool. Apart from the shooting of the two youths on the Corentyne who were demanding to have the votes of the 1973 elections counted at the place of poll, others were also shot down in that period. Ohene Koama had been killed by the police in cold blood not long before Rodney met his death. Rodney, therefore, knew that the possibility of him being assassinated was great. He had two options, to leave or face the danger posed by the PNC regime. He chose to stay and try to play a part in the fight for democracy. I believe he felt
that it was a responsibility as a conscious AfricanGuyanese leader. Rodney’s killing was also a racist act. One of the reasons was that he was a Blackman opposing a regime that falsely gave the impression that it was representing African Guyanese interests. Like now, that racist propaganda was resorted to for several purposes. On the one hand it allowed the small cabal that led the PNC to enrich themselves through massive corruption and hope to keep the militant Afro-working class quiet since they appealed to racial solidarity and the artificial fear of “collie domination”. By creating the false impression that it was an African Guyanese party, the PNC obstructed the Afroworking class and farmers from gravitating to progressive ideas, ideas of patriotism of need for working class unity and solidary. Those ideas were propagated by the People’s Progressive Party. Whenever the working people became agitated due to the deteriorating economic situation the regime responded with generating fears of the PPP as a ‘Coolie Party’. This was seen when in 1971 the workers of Linden rose up to defend their Pension fund and invited Cheddi Jagan to speak with them. This was after Burnham
refused their invitation. The PNC responded by frightening the workers with the racial line of “coolie domination”. Rodney understood this completely. He saw that the working people of our country were being oppressed by a small cabal whose main interest was to enrich themselves at the expense of the people. He must have realised that the way forward was to break the fear factor that the PNC used so effectively. He helped to shift the debate to issues and principles. The views that Rodney expressed during his efforts to bring about change were not really new. Those views were being pushed by the People’s Progressive Party in the society. Cheddi Jagan was championing similar ideas all his political life. However, Rodney did not join the PPP when he returned to Guyana in 1974. He knew that had he done that the PNC cabal would have labelled him a ‘Collie Stooge’. He saw that happening all the time. As a historian he would have seen that African-Guyanese PPP members and supporters were viciously attacked and labelled “stooges”. His first public meeting in Guyana was in Campbellville. He spoke on the platform of Comrade Brindley Benn’s People’s Vanguard Party. It was a meeting in solidarity
Politicians should put Guyana first Dear Ms. Hughes and Mr. Harmon, Thank you for sharing this document with me. You might remember that in 2015, I supported the APNU+AFC coalition very publicly, with full page ads, that I paid for personally, in the Stabroek News and Kaieteur News. In fact, there are some people in the PPP who still berate me for tilting the election results of 2015, ever so slightly, away from them. Twenty three years was much too long; the middle had risen to the top; racial preference was outrageous; arrogance was abundant; leadership lacked vision; and there were troubling signs of corruption. I wanted better for Guyana. The Stabroek News featured an analysis of my ads and the clear reasons I gave for recommending that
Guyanese vote for the Coalition. I was told later that it was one of the most shared story in the history of the newspaper. You, the Coalition, have disappointed me immensely. And I believe that the people of Guyana are right to terminate your services. I continue to mourn the patterns of racial preferences and racial voting in Guyana. You did nothing to remedy that. In fact, I believe you made it worse. You collectively, created and fostered too many opportunities for cronyism, enough to make the PPP’s obnoxious cronyism look maddeningly tolerable in retrospect. You had a mostly clean slate to fashion the emerging oil economy into a showpiece of respect but you mostly blew it. And now I am sad to
say it, I am afraid that the potential benefits for the poorer sections of Guyana will be lost forever. Yes, I do not trust the PPP to share the benefit equitably. And the travesty of that rests squarely on you. But, democracy is democracy. The frauds you list are fundamentally hollow. You are committing the overarching fraud. You probably think that you have sown so much confusion and thrown so many red herrings along the way that ordinary people will wonder if you might be right. You are wrong. Guyana needs it leaders to be better stewards of the public good. You can start now by trusting your conscience over your Machiavelli. With much gratitude for the things you did right. Dr. Tulsi Dyal Singh.
with the African’s Liberation Movement. While Rodney was speaking an old known PNC heckler and disruptor of PPP meetings started to heckle shouting “Jagan You Lie”. That caused a big laugh from the crowd. However, the heckler who at that time had never heard of Walter Rodney, never heard nor seen him before, was recognising the message that he was delivering, it was familiar to him, thus the heckle. The PNC cabal recognised the danger that those messages were now being espoused by an African Guyanese. The African Guyanese masses would then become more receptive to similar views that the PPP popularised. Moreover, many progressive and democratically minded African Guyanese who had the experience of the vicious attacks that African Guyanese PPP members and supporters have had to endure and who were previously reluctant to come out in support of the PPP, now had another place to go to. Many young Indian Guyanese also gravitated to Rodney. They were people who were influenced by the PPP and saw an opportunity of openly opposing the PNC without being branded as racists. This was seen in many of the activities of the WPA. At the height of what the WPA called the Rebellion often it was young Indian boys in the front ranks confronting the PNC. I saw that when a WPA meeting was broken up at John Forde Car Park and when the PNC immediately after went to hold a meeting on the same spot. The PNC could not start its meeting for quite a while and was forced to retreat to another spot in the area.
The race card that the PNC played every time it found itself in problems was becoming ineffective because Rodney was an African Guyanese. His message was for unity of the people. His understanding of the racial issues was deep. He did not have a one fit solution to all racial issues. In the book “Walter Rodney Speaks” he said he tried “to make it clear that the way in which one was using the word “black” in a West Indian context must, of necessity, embrace the majority of African and Indian populations. And the reason I did that was because I knew that the word “black” could well be interpreted in a narrow sense to mean African and hence anti-Indian”. The PNC regime found his ideas too close to those of the PPP and too dangerous for them. They resorted to beating up people attending Rodney’s meetings to dissuade them. They threatened, dismissed people and jailed some. That did not deter Rodney. To silence him they once more took the path of political murder. On June 13, 1980, they accomplished the job, they killed him. However, what he accomplished in his short life has become much more obvious today. One of the main contributions that he made was to help raise the consciousness of our people to make them realise that we could not exist in the same old way, that change was necessary. He helped many Guyanese, Afro-Guyanese in particular, to break the mental chains that the PNC used to imprison their minds. He reinforced the argument that democracy was indispensable to the resolution of the nation’s problems – economic, social
and political. It is only through having a democratic system that all other questions would be resolved, questions of race and ethnicity. At the heart of democracy is free and fair elections. This is inescapable. While we observe this date, it is important to point out we must not take democracy for granted. We must always guard freedom as the apple of our eye. No matter what political party one may support we would be making a big mistake to think that an undemocratic regime can bring sustained all round progress. The lack of democracy leads to dictatorship and, inevitably, to social and economic decline and political oppression. Few will not doubt that what occurred in March 2020 Elections, in which they were caught red handed trying to steal votes, was the first that this happened. It is clear to most that what was attempted in 2020 succeeded in 2015. That explains why the regime was so reckless in dealing with the state’s assets and property as if it was their own. There was this mad rush to get rich quickly. They were neither accountable nor transparent. They felt they would always get away with rigging. However times have changed, Walter Rodney made a significant contribution to put us back on the democratic path in 1992. He lost his life fighting for democracy, and integrity in public life. We owe it to him to ensure that we don’t go back to that period of paramountcy. In the memory of all those who fought gallantly for this country’s freedom, one of whom played a great part was Walter Rodney, let us not allow undemocratic government ever to succeed. Donald Ramotar
GECOM Chair can face legal troubles Dear Editor, With reference to the opinionated report of CEO Lowenfield, GECOM has no choice but to use the SORs to declare the outcome of the elections. The CEO’s report is highly biased in favour of APNU led coalition. The chair is under undue pressure to be partial and favour APNU. But she must make a professional decision and reject the CEO’s report. She must use the recount numbers to declare the rightful winner. She gave a legal undertaking to the court that she would conduct a recount and use it to declare the results to replace the Mingo fraud. She and Mingo
would now be in contempt of court if she fails to honour that affidavit. She finds herself in serious legal predicament. The international community is watching the chair’s action. Failing the declaration of the right winner, the country could face sanctions and possibly ‘rendition’ of GECOM figures like the chair and CEO and Mingo. The chair should take note of the missive from Ms. Misir, the US public servant at State Department, that she and others could find themselves possibility being extradited to a foreign state to face trial for electoral fraud. Ms. Misir said sanction is not
simply a word but includes, among things, issuance of international warrants for prosecution of those who aid and abet fraud and also those who are beneficiaries from forgeries. Many have been renditioned to the US on all kinds of fraud. If the chair does not do the honourable thing, she could be forced to live like a prisoner for the rest of her life presuming she is not renditioned to face trial in America. I urge the President, for whom I voted, to accept the result and let us move on with rebuilding our party. Yours truly, Nigel Philadelphia
Kaieteur News
Tuesday June 16, 2020
Press Director justifies President's limited press engagements By Mikaila Prince
I
n light of recent complaints by members of the media regarding incumbent President David Granger's limited press engagements, Director of the Public Information and Press Service (PIPS) Unit at the Ministry of the Presidency, Ariana Gordon came out to justify the Head of State's actions. Gordon's comments were in response to questions posed to her by Kaieteur News, after the President conducted an interview on Sunday to which only four media houses were given approval to take part in. The Press Director claimed that there is a ranged criterion which goes into the decision-making process for the Head of State's media engagements. She explained that these include, but are not limited to, requests received, audience and reach, type of media platform, the message, the President's schedule and availability. She added that the Office of the President considers this range of factors for all media engagements and reserves the right to offer exclusives, group interviews and other types of media engagements.
Gordon's criteria appear difficult to apply to the decision to exclude this paper especially considering that Kaieteur News is Guyana's largest selling daily newspaper, possesses a radio station with a coast-tocoast frequency distribution, as well as a Facebook platform and a webpage that receives web-traffic of over 100,000 individual hits every day. Gordon went on to highlight that on a daily basis, “the PIPS Unit receives many requests for interviews, comments, and statements and we have always endeavored to facilitate as many of these as time allows.” Gordon maintained that the Ministry's “practice has always been to engage with all media outlets in a way that underscores fairness and balance, and we will continue to do so.” However, the President has recently given two exclusive hour-long interviews in less than a month to New York-based APNU+AFC activist, Mark Benschop. President of the Guyana Press Association (GPA), Nazima Ragubhir was asked by this publication about whether she inquired with the Press Director as to why
only four media houses were given the proverbial green light to attend the President's interview. Ragubhir responded in the positive and she explained that, “I did enquire of Ms Ariana Gordon late Saturday night when I was informed that my request was finally being granted. Her response was that there have been a lot of requests for interviews and the President is granting them in order as most importantly as he finds the time.” The GPA President further shared that on Sunday she made a second inquiry with Gordon for the unit's decision to only allow four media houses at the interview. She was informed by Gordon that the President will be providing other interviews as his schedule provides. N o t a b l y, P r e s i d e n t Granger, on numerous occasions, has been admonished by members of the media, including Raghubir at one point, for his limited engagements with the press. In 2018 this publication highlighted that after assuming office, President Granger had only conducted two press conferences in three years. Even after official trips overseas, and numerous
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PPP/C won elections, prepare for transition - OAS tells Guyana President David Granger official engagements, the President had not faced the nation, opting to use the Department of Public Information (DPI) for the release of information. However, DPI releases leave no room for questions from the press. In late 2019, Leader of the People's Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C), Bharrat Jagdeo, chided the President for infrequent press conferences. For 2020, President Granger has conducted only one media engagement, but in a very controlled environment, which dates back to May 17th at the National Aquatic Centre in Liliendaal during his visit to the Arthur Chung Convention Centre (ACCC). In that engagement, questions were limited to one per media entity, he refused to answer several questions posed to him, and left the venue after only twenty minutes. His first one hour interview with Benschop was given the next day.
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he Organization of America States (OAS) has told the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Justice (ret'd) Claudette Singh, that the People's Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C) has won Guyana's 2020 elections, as shown in the recently published report of the Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, and as such, the A Partnership For National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) must begin the process of transition—which will allow the legitimately elected government to take its place. In a statement to the press yesterday, the OAS, who acted as one of the international observers missions which monitors the March 2 General and Regional Elections, supported the findings of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), which yesterday published their observations of the national recount exercise, which were deemed as transparent and
Father of 4 seeks public assistance due to medical condition
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erry Joseph a father of four is seeking the public's assistance as he tells his tale of struggling to support his family due to a medical condition. The 35year-old man who resides with his family in Herstelling, East Bank Demerara (EBD) became ill in November 2019 and later underwent thoracic surgery at Woodlands Hospital on January 28, 2020. Thoracic surgery refers to operations on organs in the chest, including the heart, lungs and esophagus these include coronary artery b y p a s s s u rg e r y, h e a r t transplant, lung transplant and removal of parts of the lung affected by cancer. He explained to Kaieteur News that he had to have a reciprocal infusion on the right side of his body, since his lung was infected due to
pulmonary edema, a condition caused by excess fluid in the lungs. This fluid accumulates in the numerous air sacs in the lungs, making it difficult to breathe. Joseph said he spent approximately two months in the hospital after his surgery but then the wound become infected and began oozing. This he said lasted for approximately four months, resulting in “several hospital visits to Diamond, G eorgetow n and even Woodlands Hospitals.” He then underwent a second surgery called a “window surgery” where the doctors “made a hole in the rib and open it and leave it to drain, one at the back and one at the side.” “This one is more painful, plenty pain,” he said. Coupled with this, Joseph said that the daily medication that he is using is
damaging his stomach. This was shown in a recent X-ray. With him being the breadwinner for the family, the man explained that his family is finding it “real real rough, real tough.” “Since November month this thing start, my kid didn't get to go to school the whole of November and now I can't do no work, I use to try to work, the doctors told me in three months I could work and I try to work and it form a septic and resulted in the second surgery so I cannot work.” He added that “I have four daughters, three live with me, they are 13, 14, and 2 years old and I am renting a home. It's real hard.” Joseph said that before his surgery he worked as a fisherman, but on his last trip he was attacked by pirates. “So I didn't come back with much. A few friends have
Terry Joseph after Surgery
been assisting me but I can't depend on them all the time. Thank God for my mother, who is alive and assisting me – weekend time she give me a lil five thousand and so. I have bills to pay, rent, and need my medication, the hospital bills. My eyes are now bad I need glasses as well. It's very frustrating on the family they don't know what to do,” he added. He further pointed out that “I'm not like this, I don't
like ask people for help so the lil money I receive I sent my wife to the fishery to purchase banga mary and other fish, which she and children clean and packaged to go around the village and sell to earn a lil income.” He added that “Some people have helped we, they help with lil grocery and so but we can't expect people to give we money so that is how we try to get lil money. I am (continued on page 23)
credible, and “nothing prevents the Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission from now declaring the election, based on these results.” Compounding upon the credibility of the recount results, the OAS made reference to their June 4 statement in which OAS observers who were present on each day of the national recount had reported that the process was conducted in a professional, transparent and impartial fashion, which allowed GECOM, political parties and other stakeholders to accurately determine the results for each polling station. Against this, “the OAS reiterates that there is no reason not to support the results of the recount process.” Furthermore, the OAS made highlight of the that gazetted order for the recount, which required that “ascertained and verified” matrices of the results for each of the ten electoral districts be submitted to the CEO, who would then tabulate these results and submit them to GECOM, along with a summary of the observation reports prepared for each District. OAS noted that the report submitted by Lowenfield on June 13, records multiple “allegations” of irregularities by a contesting party in each District, which are then used as a basis for determining that the electoral process in each of the ten Districts was not credible. However the OAS was quick to point out that, “There is little evidence in the CEO's report of efforts to investigate or otherwise address any of the alleged irregularities presented. His contention that the entire election be set aside on this basis alone is astonishing.” In its statement of April 15, prior to the commencement of the recount, the OAS had recommended the exclusion of any official who had displayed partisan behaviour during the electoral process. While the CEO's approach to his report is therefore disappointing, it is not unexpected, they said.
Kaieteur News
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Tuesday June 16, 2020
AFC leader wants elections annulled - Says fresh elections needed, as March 2 poll was “not fair nor credible” repeatedly stated recently
By Shikema Dey
Prime Ministerial that the March 2 elections hopeful and AFC were not credible Leader, Khemraj In contrast, the People's Ramjattan Progressive Party Civic
A
lliance For Change leader and Prime Ministerial hopeful, Khemraj Ramjattan wants the March 2 Elections annulled and fresh elections called, saying that the March 2 polls were neither fair nor credible. He made these comments in response to questions from Kaieteur News about whether the AFC accepts the results of the recount, in light of the report of the CARICOM S c r u t i n i z i n g Te a m ' s assessment that the elections were credible and the recount could be used as the basis for the declaration of a winner. “Will attend to your questions, after a mature deliberation of the CARICOM report,” Ramjattan stated. He has, however, report on the Chief Elections Officer (CEO) of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Keith
Lowenfield on the recount results and observations. In that report, the CEO said that none of the district elections could be ascertained to meet the standard of fairness and credibility. He buttressed these assertions on the bases of irregularities observed during the recount, as well as the allegations made by APNU+AFC which the CEO said were “of substance” after checks were made with the Immigration Department and General Registrar's Officer. In responding to Kaieteur News, Ramjattan
said that “A cue can be taken” when I say that I am impressed with the CEO's summaries which I have deliberated on thoroughly.” According to the AFC leader, from the findings of the recount as outlined in Lowenfield's report and his own presence at the recount, “the Elections were neither fair nor credible in my opinion.” The process, he said, “should be annulled and fresh elections called.” Ramjattan and other representatives of the APNU+AFC Coalition have
(PPP/C) and A New and United Guyana (ANUG) have held that to annul the elections would be the exclusive jurisdiction of the Court, after it has investigated the elections in the form of an elections petition. But while those parties note the Court as the appropriate avenue for an aggrieved party to seek redress, they hold the view that the Coalition only wants the elections annulled because it knows it lost. The CARICOM report also noted the option of an elections petition in its report on the National Recount, though it also noted that the elections were credible and should constitute the basis on which a declaration is made. Ramjattan was the sole respondent, though he only did so in part, to a series of questions posed by Kaieteur News to the constituent
meant to buttress claims of dead and migrant voters were numerous. It noted that in one instance, one APNU+AFC agent queried serial numbers in one work station where no one had voted. The team said that it viewed the exercise undertaken by the coalition agents as “a fishing expedition” to gather data for an elections petition. It also called the exercise an “abuse of the system”. “The net was cast extremely wide in the hope of making at least a small catch and at times, the anticipated harvest ended in slim pickings,” the report states. It said this because the numerous serial numbers being queried per ballot box often did not gather a significant return relative to the queried number. “Team did not view the objections raised by APNU+AFC as materially relevant to the recount,” it said. One “unfortunate” occurrence the team pointed out was that the decision to read the statements of the observation reports during the live stream of the tabulation process, “provided fodder to persons
who peddled the queries as factual” and “led to a false narrative in the public domain that the elections were not credible and that massive electoral fraud occurred on poll day… [even a s t h e p a r t y o ff e r e d ] absolutely no evidence to substantiate the allegations…” This, it said, was constituted by “outrageous claims, exaggerations, distortions and misinformation which was peddled in the public domain” in clear “misuse of the media to set an agenda of mistrust and illegality.” The report of the CARICOM team bears a stark contrast to the report of the Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, submitted just days earlier, in which he said that none of the elections for the 10 electoral districts could be ascertained to meet the standard of fairness and credibility. He had buttressed his assertions by positing that the allegations made by the coalition were found to be “of substance” after checks were made with the Immigration Department and the General Registrar's Office. The order for the recount had only required Lowenfield
to provide a tabulation of the results of the recount and a summary of what was stated in the observation reports. As Lowenfield offered his opinion on the credibility of the elections in his report, the People's Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) had stated that he acted outside of his authority. A New and United Guyana (ANUG) Chair, Timothy Jonas had said, identifying Lowenfield, that the GECOM Secretariat is compromised. In this regard, the party pointed to the need for an investigation of GECOM to identify and expel the elements which make up a compromised faction, working conspiratorially to aid APNU+AFC. In a recent press statement, the party condemned Lowenfield's comments in the report, identifying him as the head of a “rogue” Secretariat. The CARICOM team noted in its report, as noted by PPP/C and ANUG, that the law provides an avenue that any aggrieved party may use to seek redress, in the form of an elections petition. See executive summary of CARICOM report on pages 11-13 of today's edition of Kaieteur News.
parties of the APNU+AFC coalition, in light of the report from the CARICOM team. The questions, centering on acceptance of the elections results, a political audit of GECOM, an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the manipulation of the Region Four elections results, and proof of the coalition's claims of fraud, were also sent to PNCR Executive, Aubrey Norton; and Working People's Alliance (WPA) members David Hinds and Tabitha Sarabo-Halley. Hinds told this newspaper that he would answer in his personal capacity, and that he cannot speak for the WPA as the
party “has not yet come to conclusions about the election.” However, up to press time, no responses were sent. Kaieteur News also made calls to Justice For All Party (JFAP), Chandra N a r i n e S h a r m a ; W PA executive, Rupert Roopnaraine; and Guyana Action Party (GAP) Leader Sydney Allicock. The questions were also forwarded to President David Granger's Director of Public Information Service, Arianna Gordon who noted receipt. While Gordon said she would keep in touch, she could not commit to a timeline for responses. Up to press time, Kaieteur News received no answers. (Additional Reporting by Kemol King)
Women allegedly raped while looking for job, apartment
slapped with 2 counts of rape CARICOM says elections were credible, .... - DJRenay Sambach From page 3 illegal. The team also commented on the behaviour of the party agents – not specifying a party – who showed “a level of aggression which left much to be desired”. It noted that the presence of the agents was critical for many reasons including transparency, but noted that the conduct of the APNU+AFC agents, in particular, was unacceptable. The report states that “The Team observed many instances of blatant incivility on the part of APNU/AFC agents particularly in Region 4 work stations which were acute during the first week of the national recount. Often these emotional outburst, loud shouts, arrogance, aggressive and dismissive attitude descended into shouts of 'Shut up' and on one occasion to personal insults and invectives…” In cases where the coalition's agents requested information whether certain serial numbers had been ticked off to indicate that they had voted on Election Day, the CARICOM team described the exercise as “bizarre”, as the requests,
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hirty-five-yearold Roger Gibbons, a Disc Jockey (DJ) of 54 La Parfaite H a r m o n i e , We s t B a n k Demerara (WBD), is accused of raping two women within three months. According to report Gibbons allegedly raped one of the women while she was looking for an apartment and the other while she was in search of a job. On Friday, Gibbons was arraigned before Magistrate Zamina Ally-Seepaul in the Vreed-en-Hoop Magistrate's Court, where he was slapped with two counts of rape. He was not required to plead to the indictable charges. It is alleged that on April 5, 2020, at La Parfaite H a r m o n i e , We s t B a n k Demerara (WBD) he raped a 21-year-old woman. Based on information Gibbons met the woman at Vreed-enHoop, Stelling and explained to him that she was having difficulties locating an apartment/house to rent. Gibbons allegedly told the woman that he knows about a house and assured her that he could take her to see the place. He reportedly took her to a single-flat concrete house in La Parfaite
Remanded: Roger Gibbons Harmonie. When they entered the house, Gibbons allegedly locked the door and had sexual intercourse with the woman without her consent. It was also reported that Gibbons allegedly locked the woman in the building for three days before she was able to contact a relative who came to her rescue. The matter was reported and an investigation was launched. It is also alleged that on June 1, 2020, at La Parfaite H a r m o n i e , We s t B a n k Demerara (WBD), Gibbons raped a 25-year-old woman. According to information he lured the woman to his house (continued on page 23)
Kaieteur News
Tuesday June 16, 2020
PAGE 09
The COVID-19 threat has not abated T
he COVID-19 coronavirus is still out there. A spike in local cases can occur at any time unless the population is extremely careful. And the population is not being careful. A fresh outbreak has occurred in China. More than 100 new cases have been recorded in Beijing in recent days. China may have presumed that the worst was over one month ago. The new outbreak shows how easy it is for a spike in cases. Deaths from the coronavirus are still high. Last Sunday alone, more than 3,000 persons died around the world from the coronavirus. And more will die in the coming days because there are still 3.4 million active cases in the world. The virus is easily transmittable from person to person. And therefore the risk
of infection remains high in Guyana, especially with the limited reopening of schools. When the coronavirus outbreak began in the United States last March, very few persons expected that the death toll would be as high as it eventually became. Everyone was alarmed when China recorded more than 3, 500 deaths. It would have been unimaginable three months ago that the United States, Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, Brazil, Belgium, India, Germany, United Kingdom, Iran and Russia would surpass the death toll in the world's most populous state. But that is exactly what has happened. The United States has registered more than 118,000 deaths. The models developed predict that more than 140,000 are going to die. It is projected that in excess of 20,000 more
Americans are going to succumb in the next few weeks. So far more than 438,000 persons have died worldwide. More are going to die. Brazil is now the epicenter of the virus and this is right next door to Guyana. A spike in coronavirus cases is expected worldwide in the next two weeks. This is due to two main factors: the relaxing of social restrictions, including the reopening of schools and non-essential businesses and the after effects of the anti-racism protests in Europe and in the United States. Closer to home many countries in the region are beginning to open up. They have had a better control of the virus than Guyana because their health ministries have carefully managed the situation. Trinidad and Tobago whose
Commonwealth Secretary-General urges acceptance of recount results
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ecretary- General o f Commonwealth, Patricia Scotland, urged the acceptance the results from the recently concluded recount exercise and added that she welcomes the report submitted by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) team to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM). In a statement to the press last evening, the Secretary- General explained, “The CARICOM Observer report is clear that the recount results are
Secretary- General of Commonwealth, Patricia Scotland
completely acceptable and that nothing that the CARICOM Observers witnessed warrants a challenge to the inescapable conclusion that the recount results are acceptable and should constitute the basis of the declaration of the results of the 2 March elections.” “The Commonwealth continues to stand with Guyana,” Scotland said, “and urge the leaders and the people of Guyana to live up to the lofty aspirations set out in your constitution, your electoral laws, and the Commonwealth Charter.”
.......................................................... Dem boys seh...
Honey fuh money
I
f a man give a woman money all de time, it gun come a time when de man gun ask fuh some honey. De woman who want money and mo money might fight it hard fuh seh no to de request fuh some honey. Is same thing with farrin country. Dem does come and give you all kind of tings. Dem does sweeten you. When you want money fuh borrow, dem does stretch out dem hand. And you does be so glad dat them so nice dat you gun open your hand fuh mo. But all nice tings nah nice. While dem giving you
de nice tings, dem sucking yuh honey dry. Dem stealing yuh wealth and at de same time putting you in debt. Is dat wha some countries like China does do. Dem does lend you all wha you want and when you can't pay back, dem gone with de honey bowl wha dem dipping dem hands into all de time. Dem boys seh dat de elections results is the least of Guyana problems. Because when de elections done, we still gat fuh feed, house and clothes we people and give dem picknee a good education.
With dem farrin company coming here and tekkin over we wealth, we gat to constantly ask what we getting out of it. Tek de case of de big gold mining company in de Cuyuni that tekkin' out we wealth. It decide fuh sell to a Chinese company fuh more than US$300M. Guess what? Guyana nat getting a blind cent from dat deal. Never mind is we assets dat dem selling. People coming in de country and we not benefitting. Talk half and hope that Guyanese open dem eyes to de rip off wha tekkin place across the country.
population is almost double that of Guyana has 123 cases with only eight deaths. Three weeks ago, they had 118 cases of which none were active. Guyana, in contrast had 48 active cases as at last Sunday. The threat from the COVID-19 coronavirus is not yet over. The reproduction number is still far too high to allow for a full-reopening of the economy. But even with a full re-opening, certain measures will have to be put in place. Social distancing would still have to be practiced. The requirement that masks must be worn before anyone can enter a business will have to be maintained. It will have to be made mandatory for those using public transportation. Certain
places of entertainment will have to remain closed until this threat is completely over. Better contact-tracing has to be put in place and the format of the daily health bulletins will have to be revamped. The coronavirus threat is likely to increase from 1st July with the phased opening of the country's airports. Most of the persons arriving from the United States are usually from New York. Despite the decline in the total number of coronavirus in New York State, it along with New Jersey still account for approximately 20% of the new cases in the United States. Until such time as the daily death toll in New York City and New Jersey is in double digits, no commercial flights, other than special
charters which bring Guyanese back home, should be permitted. At this point it appears safe to allow persons from the Caribbean but who have not travelled to and from North America or Europe in recent times to come to Guyana once they are certified free of the virus. Guyana has to take steps to protect itself against a spike in infections because any second wave will be more costly than the first wave. (The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
Kaieteur News
PAGE 10
Tuesday June 16, 2020
THE FREDDIE KISSOON COLUMN
The end has been reached A
ll the people in the world who followed the election saga in Guyana, except those who belonged to the PNC and AFC and those who wanted their sweet to continue with those two parties in government, knew that the APNU+AFC lost the 2020 poll. All the people in the world, who followed the saga since Myers, Mingo, Lowenfield and Singh began to dance to the macabre to deny the results, knew the end had to come eventually. There were a number of stratagems used to delay the inevitable. Here the operative word is 'inevitable� because
even if the stratagems were numerous, the APNU+AFC could not remain in office because the most powerful countries in the world, and the most powerful international organizations, would not have allowed the continuation of an APNU+AFC regime beyond a few months. So what has been happening since Mingo's evil on March 4 was simply the postponement of the inevitable. APNU+AFC has reached the point of diminishing return or the point of no return. But before we come to how it ended, let us look at some of the strategies after Mingo failed
and it became impossible to swear in Granger. First, delay the recount as long as possible. Lowenfield designated 156 days which made him look asinine in the eyes of the world but Lowenfield, like Claudette Singh, never bothered with how they looked in front of the eyes of the world. When the 156-day pantomime of Lowenfield fizzled out, the court was the next stop. Had the courts prevented the recount, then the plan of Mingo/Lowenfield/ Myers/ Singh would have gone into effect. That is simple to understand. If there was no recount, then GECOM had to accept the declaration of
March 14, thus Granger would have been sworn in. The court direction was derailed because under the Constitution, GECOM cannot be prevented by the courts to pursue a recount. We come now to stratagem number three. Create gargantuan fictions like ghost voting, missing documents, multiple-voting, etc. Then Vincent Alexander and Singh would have taken over and the election deemed inoperable. All three depravities were designed simply to keep the APNU+AFC in power for a temporary time until sanctions began. The APNU+AFC sugar daddies knew that it was impossible to be legally declared as the winners and they would have to go, but as I suggested in previous columns the attitude, was not to concede and step down but to negotiate with the ABC countries and EU for some form of power-sharing. It doesn't look like that can happen after CARICOM's report. If Singh ignores the CARICOM report and there is no change of government, and APNU+AFC appeals for negotiations while sanction bites, the ABC states and the EU will reject any offer to negotiate. They will demand the exit door. So the original intention of staying in office in order to generate a power-sharing formula with the approval of CARICOM, OAS, and the
powerful western government has failed. If today or by tomorrow Singh dissolves the election results and Granger embraces emergency power, the end will still come within months because the international community will not negotiate power-sharing with Granger. For those who saw the election nightmare as a priceless opportunity for power-sharing, it will not happen in 2020, and in the remaining months of this year the PPP will be the party in government rallying against any talk of powersharing because of what the PNC did from March 4. It may eventually happen but not in 2020. My feeling is that even inclusive governance may not happen before the next election in 2025. The smaller parties are so emotionally traumatized by the Draculian nightmares the APNU+AFC sugar daddies put Guyana through that they may not want to press the PPP administration for inclusive governance in the first two years. And even if they recover from their anger and request the PPP to start a confabulation on reaching out, the PPP will resist arguing that it needs time before it can sit down with politicians who have Norman Bates type of personalities. What I think the small parties and the PPP will do in 2021 is practice their own kind of inclusive governance.
Frederick Kissoon This will involve recognizing the harsh political and ethnic realities thus reaching out to those who do not belong to the PPP but most definitely, that reaching out will not initially be directed to the PNC. I say the PNC and not APNU+AFC. The new government will have to negotiate Guyana's future with the PNC but I am absolutely sure there is going to the eruption of volcanoes if in the team, the PNC includes people like Moses Nagamootoo and Khemraj Ramjattan. (The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) [It is important for us to note that the unedited version of the Freddie Kissoon Column titled: 'Claudette Singh will declare the election improper' appeared in our Monday June 15, 2020 Edition. The column, which was unintentionally void of a disclaimer, contained some unfounded accusations against GECOM Chair, Ret'd Justice Claudette Singh. For this we extend an unequivocal apology to Justice Singh.]
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Report of the CARICOM Observer Team for the Recount of the Guyana March 02, 2020 Elections Executive Summary INTRODUCTION
T
he three-person C A R I C O M O b s e r v a t i o n Te a m , comprising Cynthia Barrow-Giles, Sylvester King and John Jarvis arrived in Guyana on May 01, 2020 to observe the recount of the votes cast on March 02, 2020. The arrival of the Team followed the invitation of the Retired Justice Claudette Singh, Chair of GECOM, to the SecretaryGeneral of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) requesting the return of the CARICOM High-Level Team. The High-Level Team had been dispatched to Guyana in March 2020 to scrutinize and supervise the recount of the votes. As history would now show, the mission was aborted. In the interim, there was intense high-level negotiations which culminated in the selection of the three-person team. Dispute resolution is an accepted part of electoral governance and the proposed national recount of the March 02, 2020 General and Regional Elections in Guyana is but one example of such. What remains still unclear is the Commission's perception of what a recount actually constituted given the contours and the elaborate process which was outlined by the Gazetted Order and the work order plan issued by the administrative arm of the Commission. Having arrived in Guyana on May 01, 2020 it was not until May 04, that GECOM finally published the Order in the Gazette. This was preceded by a discussion with GECOM on the Order itself and changes to that Order, given the concerns of the Team that the draft Order had conceived of an elevated role for the CARICOM Team. Having settled that issue on May 02, 2020, the Team had to wait for another four days before the first ballot box could be delivered to the work station and the recount officially commenced. There is of course little doubt that the resolution of the election dispute in the country was not handled with the degree of efficiency that one would have anticipated given that electoral violence is not an uncommon phenomenon in the country. Nevertheless, the Team wishes to offer its congratulations to the many GECOM workers who laboured long hours over a course of thirty-three days to bring the disputed election results to a near end, for this was but just one of the four stages outlined by the Gazetted Order on the national recount. From the outset, the Team wishes to acknowledge that the exercise that we observed was not in fact a recount. It was an audit of the votes cast on March 02, 2020
and from the start it was conceived as an audit, notwithstanding the statements on a national recount. A recount of votes means exactly that, a counting of the ballots cast. In this case, the socalled recount extended to issues normally reserved for an audit of ballots cast in an election. The public utterances of some GECOM Commissioners, political pundits and politicians may have sounded an ominous tone for the 2020 elections, with the partisan driven and distorted narrative on migrant voting, phantom voting, and implied voter impersonation. The recounting of the votes was conducted with as much precision as possible and with absolutely no hint of bias shown on the part of the GECOM station workers. Their impartiality with respect to the actual vote recount was outstanding. Overall, while we acknowledge that there were some defects in the recount of the March 02, 2020 votes cast for the General and Regional Elections in Guyana, the Team did not witness anything which would render de recount, and by extension, the casting of the ballot on March 02, so grievously deficient procedurally or t e c h n i c a l l y, ( d e s p i t e s o m e irregularities), or sufficiently deficient to have thwarted the will of the people and consequently preventing the election results and its declaration by GECOM from reflecting the will of the voters. The actual count of the vote was indeed transparent. The Global Health Pandemic and the Return of CARICOM It would be remiss of the Team if we did not assess the impact of the global health pandemic on CARICOM's ability to organise for the recount and its effects on the overall management of the recount itself. Firstly, the ability of CARICOM to identify persons who were willing to travel during this period of heightened restrictions was constrained. However, once the Team had been identified, the CARICOM Secretariat through its Secretary-General Irwin La Rocque had to engage with the Guyana National COVID-19 Task Force, given the closure of the borders of the country. After intense negotiations, the way was paved for the return of CARICOM thus removing an important hurdle to the ability of the regional organisation to observe the national recount of the votes. Recounting over two thousand ballot boxes (2,339) is no small feat and the global health pandemic clearly would have had an impact on the organisation of the recount process. While GECOM generally determines its modus operandi, the
establishment of the National COVID-19 Task Force from the perspective of GECOM necessitated that the Commission observe the safety protocols determined by the Task Force. Among other things, the National Task Force required that social and physical distancing protocols were put in place. The protocols recommended by this imperative limited the number of work stations established at the Centre as well as the number of personnel. One of the first acts of the Commission was to seek the support of the Task Force in extending the hours of work beyond the national set time of 6:00 p.m. for the start of the curfew. In this the Commission was successful, with the Task Force agreeing to an extension to 7:00p.m. daily. The Gazetted Order and Amendment to the Order The Gazetted Order for the recount established in part a convoluted process for the final declarations of the results of the election which required submissions of reports and resubmission of reports as well as deliberations of the Commission before a final declaration could be made. Furthermore, the Order which was issued a mere two days before the stated date for the start of the process, in a sense used language which would ensure that the Order had to be amended. We refer to the reference to the 25 days maximum limit of the recount, rather than stating not less than 25 days. This required an amendment to the Order as it became clear that the recount could not be concluded in 25 days. Another issue was the statement on the number of work stations, which the Order limited to a maximum of 10. This was to prove detrimental and occupied a tremendous amount of the time of the Chair of GECOM as she sought approval of the task force for an increase in the number of work stations in order to expedite the process of the recount. It must be noted that not all the Commissioners were supportive of the need for additional work stations. We note, that the Order outlined the procedures to be followed at the recount which was faithfully followed by the CEO in his stated work plan for the recount. From the outset then, we recognized that the Order called for an audit rather than a mere counting of the ballots and we do believe that this was a colossal error on the part of the Commission, for it facilitated delay ensuring that the recount could not be completed within or by the stipulated period.
GECOM's Stated Work Plan for the Recount The national recount which commenced on May 06, at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre was held in accordance with the stated processes under Sections 83, 84 (6)-(11), 87, 89 (1) and 90 of the Representation of the People Act. In keeping with the Work Plan, the removal and relocation of the containers of the ballot boxes for the recount to the Arthur Chung Conference Centre occurred from May 01, 2020 and was accompanied by the persons who were entitled to accompany the conveyance of the ballot boxes. Further, the same procedures used for the counting of the ballots at the March 02 polls consistent with ROPA were used (84.1). Additional ROPA's provisions for the identification of valid votes were clearly outlined under Section 87 (2) (a) (b) (c) and (d), 87 (3) (1) and (II) in relation to what constituted a clear intent of the voter. In addition to the party representatives and candidates to monitor the recount (if the latter chose to the present), GECOM's Work Plan also provided for the presence of one local observer in each station including the Tabulation Centre and the CARICOM Observer Team. Indeed, under Section 2 (1) of GECOM's Work Plan, the national recount was to be "executed in the presence of a CARICOM HighLevel Team".
CARICOM was thus seen as an indispensable component of the national recount exercise. Given the above, and the public audio broadcast of the process, the recount process was conducted in a transparent manner. As a direct result of the intense interest in the outcome of the recount and in the interest of transparency, the Work Plan of GECOM provided for the progress of the national recount to be broadcast to the public via live audio broadcast from every work station and live streaming from the Tabulation Centre where the votes would be tabulated from each and every ballot box as the Statements of Recount (SOR's) were delivered. The Work Plan also provided for a clear path to dispute resolution which did not include the Commissioners at the level of the work stations. As a general rule this was followed scrupulously and ensured a high level of transparency at all times. Methodology of the Teams The Recount Strategy In as much as the Team comprised three persons, it was accepted that it was virtually impossible to deploy throughout the Arthur Chung Conference Centre and be present at every one of the work stations. An early decision was therefore taken that the Team would realise greater results by concentrating its efforts in Region 4, and visit the other stations in Regions 1 through 3, (continued on page 12)
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Tuesday June 16, 2020
Report of the CARICOM Observer Team for the Recount... not contain the statutory documents, such as poll books, unused ballot papers, the OLE, counterfoil of used ballots and so on. In the Team's assessment, many of the issues which emerged at the recount and which contributed to excessive delay in what was to be a technical exercise but which proved to be a political exercise was done primarily with the political objective of preparing the groundwork for a post recount legal challenge of the recount. We are also buoyed in our assessment of this political objective given the public statements of the Attorney General of Guyana on the validity of the recount; a comment which the Team felt was a snub to CARICOM by the Government's legal advisor. Further, we are of the firm opinion that the decision to insist on the elaborate checklist for the recount was a questionable one, indeed a bad decision, which contributed to the lengthy and unreasonable length of time to recount the ballots. In essence what occurred at the recount was more akin to an audit and not a recount. Indeed, we have concluded that delay was deliberately built into the system, given the Work Plan produced by GECOM and that the process could have been accelerated without sacrificing the vaunted and necessary transparency of the recount process.
From page 11 these being the 4 regions/districts where the recount began. By the end of the recount process, the Team was able to observe the recount process in 423 work stations across the 10 Regions, with Regions 3 and 4 accounting for the majority of the observed recount process. We were constrained further in our observation of the work stations in as much as the Team Leader had to be present in the Tabulation Centre on a daily basis. The Process of the Recount and Observations Every work station the team observed during thirty-three-day period of the actual recounting process was manned by four members of the GECOM staff. Based on what we saw at the recount, it was clear that GECOM staff who managed the vast majority of the work stations which we observed were for the most part well trained in the basic procedural matters. However, it was also evident that there were varying d e g r e e s o f e ff i c i e n c y a n d effectiveness of the staff. During the first week of the recount process, the pace of the recount was extremely slow, sometimes excruciatingly so, primarily as a result of the following factors: - GECOM's elaborate and unnecessary checklist (see Appendix IV). A checklist which was unnecessarily/excessively burdensome and which was suggestive of an audit rather than a recount; - Over vigilance of the party counting agents; - Uncertainty of the Staff; - Obvious intimidation and trepidation of the staff in the face of extreme pressure from party agents, - Unsure staff, which often necessitated the supervisor referring basic issues to Regional Coordinators. While there was some inconsistency across the work stations in following the work plan, the Team did not view these variations as detrimental to the recount. Indeed, the recount was meticulous with the staff working under extreme pressure from party agents and the weight of the exercise. For the most part, GECOM followed faithfully its stated Work Plan with the requisite number of persons in the polling stations. The requirement for a manual recount of the ballots by definition, ensured a level of inefficiency as it required the individual reviewing of the paper ballots and the announcement of each vote. For transparency purposes, the ballots were first scanned for the watermark, then placed under a
Basket of Issues
scanner and projected on a 65-inch television screen for the benefit of the counting agents and observers in the counting stations. A second official recorded each announced vote for the respective party list of candidates for both the general and regional election which were recounted separately. Outside of the counting of the ballots the work station staff consistently looked for any anomalies such as: - whether the number of ballots exceeded the registered voters on the Official List of Electors (OLE) and the number of counterfoils issued; - the existence of any registered justification for persons voting outside their region on polling
district (poll books were useful here). Much was made of so-called migrant voters (out of jurisdiction) und "phantom voters" but no proof was offered as to the ineligibility of the persons who voted; - Absence of poll books and other material. Where there were some minor issues, the Team did not view these as sinister. Nothing we saw up to the closing days of the recount suggested that the poll workers on March 02, 2020 conducted themselves in a manner which would indicate illegality or a deliberate intent to benefit a particular list of candidates over another. However, during the last few days of the recount, the Team observed several boxes which did
One of the issues raised by the CARICOM Team in its meeting with GECOM on May 1, 2020 at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre was the need to collate a basket of issues for the work station which would be easily and consistently used to resolve issues which arose. This was done. It was also observed that the basket of issues presented some challenges for the staff managing the recount. It was noted that changes were made to the contents in the basket and staff members as well as the CARICOM Team were too frequently unaware of such changes. We were later advised that the Basket of Issues was prepared by the Commissioners which was signed by the legal officer for the Board. This came as a surprise to the Team as we were under the assumption that the Basket had been prepared by the Secretariat as the administrative arm of the Commission. The Secretariat itself had problems with the Basket of issues as some of the identified items were contrary to the statutory instrument and did invite tremendous debate in the work stations. Notably was the issue of what constituted a valid vote and its' opposite, a rejected ballot.
Behaviour of Party Representatives in Work Stations The level of aggression displayed by some agents in the recount Work Stations leaves much to be desired. Indeed, the conduct displayed by some of the observed party agents (APNU/AFC) was totally unacceptable. Having noted this, however, it is important to say that the presence of the agents was critical for many reasons, not least among which of course is the issue of transparency. The agents, particularly the representatives of the APNU/AFC and PPP/ Civic, were diligent advocates and defenders of their respective parties. Further, they served as that important fifth set of eyes so to speak where, for a variety of reasons, GECOM staff were unable to detect errors. Demands for Information on Serial Numbers by Agents The numerous requests for information on serial numbers were so bizarre, that on one observed occasion, an APNU/AFC agent was prepared to query serial numbers on the OLE in a Work Station where no one had voted. These challenges were often made on the grounds of: ¡ Death, and ¡ Migration Presumably therefore, the contention is that in the March 02, 2020 polls, the phenomenon of ghost voting occurred as well as voter impersonation and other forms of voter fraud. The Team viewed much of the exercise as a fishing expedition designed to gather data for a possible election petition and which resulted in considerable time being wasted during the recount. Furthermore, the net was cast extremely wide in the hope of at least making a small catch and at times the anticipated harvest ended in slim pickings. In only one observed recount of a ballot box was the number of queried serials confirmed as having voted in fact significant relative to the queried number. The Team did not view the objections raised by the APNU/AFC as materially relevant to the recount of the ballot, though these objections based on the information provided by GECOM to the party agents, signaled the possibility of a padded voters list which GECOM as a body must deal with expeditiously. Moreover, we simply have no evidence as to who were the ultimate beneficiaries of the alleged "ghost voting" and voter impersonation. Given the issue of transparency, the decision to provide an audio feed of the recount in every work station for public consumption no doubt contributed to the overall (continued on page 13)
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Following revocation of lease...
Chinese state-owned company taking over Guyana Goldfields had threatened Papua New Guinea Govt. - Promised to bring full strength of legal team to challenge cancellation of lease By Kiana Wilburg
A
bout three months ago, the government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) refused to renew a 20-year mining lease for Zijin Mining Group, one of China's largest state owned companies. Zijin is part of a joint venture with a local company, Barrick Niugini Limited (BNL) to operate coveted Porgera Mine which is an open pit and underground gold mine located in the Enga province of PNG. It is the second largest mine in Papua New Guinea and is regarded as one of the world's top ten producing gold mines.
Irrespective of the mine's contribution to the national purse, Marape has made it clear that he places a higher value on his people as well as the protection of his country's environment, hence his decision to cancel the 20 year-lease on the basis of environmental damage and the social unrest the operations caused. Many villagers protested the operations, stating that it has polluted the water and created other environmental and social problems, with minimal economic benefits for locals. As for Zijin Mining Group and its partner, BNL, the duo is infuriated by the government's decision. In
The Porgera Mine
the case of Zijin, it wrote the Prime Minister and made it pellucid that his actions put at risk, the relations Papua
New Guinea enjoys with China which remains its largest creditor. International news
a g e n c y, R e u t e r s h a d published an extract of the letter that was written to Marape by Chairman of
Zijin's Board, Chen Jinghe. The letter said, “As a Chinese enterprise, Zijin (continued on page 21)
Report of the CARICOM Observer Team for the Recount... From page 12 transparency of the process. Absence of Statutory Documents One issue to emerge during the recount was the absence of sensitive material. For the Team, the combined absence of used counterfoils in conjunction with the absence of marked OLE's in several work stations led to supervisors observing in their work station reports that they could not validate the votes cast. The absence of these statutory documents in the 29 ballot boxes in the face of what was an audit is troubling. However, the Team did not view their absence as fatal to the recount but pointed to the need for a serious investigation by GECOM. If, as the CEO constantly reminded the Team, the workers were welltrained, we indeed found it odd that such a significant number of boxes were so impacted. Overall, during the process of the recount, the Team did not observe any bias in terms of election errors which may have occurred on poll day. At the level of the Work Station, we did not observe evidence of deliberate and purposeful intention to subvert the poll and the recount process (except for the excessive delays attributed to a number of factors), on the part of those who were charged with administering the recount. The Team does not view the
irregularities identified, amounted to sufficient grounds to invalidate the tabulation of the votes at the recount and therefore these irregularities DO NOT constitute sufficient grounds to challenge the integrity of the recount process. While there were some irregularities, and violations of the Gazetted Order and work processes as outlined by GECOM, these were insubstantial. We found no intentional miscounting of the ballots which would constitute an election fraud necessitating further action. During the recount, the Work Station staff worked diligently, under immense pressure to bring to a close the recount of the votes. GECOM: A Problem “What the Commission wants, is what the Commission gets". CEO: GECOM Election management bodies (EMBS) constitute one of the most important institutions in any democracy, and are generally viewed as guardians of the democratic order. While GECOM is described as an independent body, it is undoubtedly a political Commission, and herein lies most of the problems, the paralysis, and the factionalism experienced by that body. The level of internal discord which is acutely manifested in the public posturing of individual Commissioners, is the norm in Guyana and unfortunately
was on full and ugly display in the 2020 elections and its aftermath. This is unsurprising given the tribalised nature of politics in the country and the appointment process of Commissioners. Their subsequent behaviour, and their public posturing are functions of the ethnic bused politics in the country combined with the zerosum politics of the intrinsically Westminster arrangements which are deeply embedded in Guyana despite the more significant postindependence alterations to the inherited political model of government. What is obvious is that the structural independence of GECOM from the machinery of government is not equated with its impartiality. Indeed, from its beginning, given the intrinsic distrust and ethnic polarisation in the country, GECOM was never conceptualised as an institution which would exemplify autonomy from partisan political influences. While this model of balanced partisan representation - not unique in the Commonwealth Caribbean in which the two dominant parties have equal representation and input was born out of a particular historical conjecture, it has served its initial purpose. Conclusion and Recommendations The national recount process then, despite some of its
administrative failings, despite some of the minor flaws, is not an indictment of the 2020 polls and the Team categorically rejects the concerted public efforts to discredit the 2020 poll up to the disastrous Region 4 tabulation. Despite our concerns, nothing that we witnessed warrants a challenge to the inescapable conclusion that the recount results are acceptable and should constitute the basis of the declaration of the results of the March 02, 2020 elections. Any aggrieved political party has been afforded the right to seek redress before the courts in the form of an election petition. The controversial nature of the 2020 General and Regional Elections affords Guyana an opportunity to revisit its electoral governance system and in particular its primary institution that of GECOM on the basis of its less than stellar performance. The Team therefore recommends the following: · We insist that to maintain GECOM in its present form would be a tragedy for the nation and the people of Guyana. GECOM, as we indicated, is a creature of the dominant political parties and there is consequently little interest on the part of Commissioners in ensuring that elections and the electoral environment are conducive to integrity based elections which will reflect the will of the people.
The Commissioners are primarily, though not exclusively dominated by the ethos of positing their respective parties to political victory. We therefore urge the immediate rethinking of the structural organisation of GECOM particularly with respect to selection of the Commissioners. · A political audit of GECOM (its successes and failing and the factors contributing to this), both the commission and its administrative arm, is urgently warranted. It therefore behoves whichever political party emerges victorious from these elections initiate an immediate political audit as, in a very real sense, GECOM betrayed its obligations to behave impartially and independently. · Greater emphasis on voter education, especially with regard to the handling of ballot papers by presiding officers and citizens. · A code of conduct governing the behaviour of party agents should be established in concert with the political parties. · T h e Te a m s t r o n g l y recommends an investigation into the missing documents. · As a minimum condition of electoral reform, the Team recommends the urgent need for the total re-registration of all voters in Guyana.
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CARICOM recommends political - Says it failed its obligation audit for GECOM to act independently By Shikema Dey
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he three-member CARICOM Scrutinizing Team yesterday in their report recommended a “political audit” for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) citing that the political nature of the seven-member Commission headed by Chairman, Ret'd Justice Claudette Singh resulted in their failure to act independently. In the damning report, the CARICOM team pointed out that Electoral Management bodies constitute one of the most important institutions of democracy, and that they are “generally viewed as guardians of the democratic order.” It said that while
GECOM is widely described as an “independent body”, most problems lied in the Commission being “undoubtedly political.” “…and herein lies most of the problems, the paralysis and the factionalism experienced by that body,” the report said. The CARICOM Team stressed that “Internal discord acutely manifested in the public posturing of Commissioners, is the norm in Guyana and was on full and ugly display in the 2020 Elections and its aftermath.” This publication should note that on numerous occasions, throughout the 2020 electoral process and the national recount, Guyanese were fed contrasting narratives and oftentimes emotional comments by Governmentappointed Commissioners,
GECOM Chair, Claudette Singh with Opposition and Government Nominated Commissioners
along with Oppositionappointed Commissioners. The behaviour of the six Commissioners, the report said was “unsurprising”,
given the tribalised nature of politics, and that they are functions of ethnic based politics in Guyana. What is obvious, the report said, was that the structural independence of GECOM from the machinery of Government is not “equated with its impartiality.” The Commission has a
seven-member structure with three members appointed by government, three by the opposition and a Chair selected on what is supposed to by a constitutional arrangement in which the Leader of the Opposition submits names from which the President chooses one. After
Granger's unilateral selection of James Patterson was overturned as unconstitutional by the Caribbean Court of Justice, consensus was finally reached between him and Bharrat Jagdeo on Justice Claudette Singh. “Indeed from its (continued on page 19)
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UGSS Tain Campus initiates Post-modern reveals: Clobbered to death before dumped in trench Students' Relief Project
F
orty-five-year-old construction worker, Andy Williams – the man reported to have been found dead with a plastic bag over his head – was beaten with a sharp object until his skull cracked open. A post-mortem conducted on the man's body yesterday revealed that he died as a result of blunt trauma to the brain caused by multiple fractures to the skull. The report also detailed that the slain man received lacerations to the face and right hand. Police have now concluded that Williams was murdered and are currently hunting his alleged killers. Kaieteur News understands that the victim might have been killed on same day he left his Zeeburg West Coast Demerara home for work. Sources said that Williams had reported for work on Saturday June 6 and had left in the afternoon after receiving his weekly wages. However, according to the Victim's family he never arrived at home that afternoon. It was later learnt that Williams had visited a Zeeburg Rum Shop that evening and purchased a bottle of liquor and chaser before From left: Delroy Marks, Jafar Gibbons (UGSS President), leaving. The following day the victim's Marissa Foster, Louisiana Deoroop and Kelvin Chinapa relatives became very worried after he failed he University of of study, taking leave of have been made to various to answer his cell phone or notify them about Guyana Student absence or carrying a faculties for development and his whereabouts. Society (UGSS) reduced work load. These are continued efforts are being They began to search the area and visited Tain Campus team has all options for the students made to work along this path. the man's friends to find out if they had seen The current project is officially launched their experiencing issues with “UGSS Berbice COVID-19 finances. Ms. Foster went on being executed under the Student's Relief Project. The to note that there are some guidance of Jafar Gibbons, relief project is intended to s t u d e n t s w i t h n o current UGSS president. There are no plans to raise provide assistance to students breadwinners in their home funds or generate additional enrolled at the campus who during this difficult period. Marks said that those who sources of funding, but if are experiencing financial difficulties as a result of the are eligible will be given food persons are so desirous to novel coronavirus pandemic. hampers and/or Personal contribute to this venture they are free to contact the D e l r o y M a r k s a n d Protective Equipment (PPE). The team is urging representatives via email: Marissa Forster, both Social Work students, are two of the students to apply before June berbicereps.uog.edu.gy or four UGSS representatives in 20, 2020. Currently there is a Delroy Mark on +592 650 limited number of hampers 4046 or Marissa Foster on Berbice. In a telephone interview that will be available and will +592 643 3529. Potential donors can be with Kaieteur News, they said be distributed on a first-come, assured that all monetary that there is a great need to first-serve basis. Delivery will be done for transactions are done with reach out to those who are in all the hampers in the month t r a n s p a r e n c y a n d need of assistance. Ms. Foster explained that of July by the student accountability. However, it is a some students are finding it representatives. The society is extremely difficult to make currently working with a preference that persons can ends meet as many persons b u d g e t t h a t c a n o n l y make their contributions by have either lost their jobs or accommodate hampers for a purchasing whatever it is that are earning far less than they particular number of students. they would like to add to the did before the pandemic. This . The UGSS across on both hampers. All essential food would have resulted in many campuses have embarked on items as well as protective s t u d e n t s w i t h d r a w i n g similar ventures to ensure gears and sanitizers will be completely from their course student's welfare. Donations accepted.
T
CARICOM recommends... From page 16 beginning, given the essential political distrust and ethnic polarization in the country, GECOM was never conceptualized as an institution which exemplified autonomy from partisan political influences,” the report noted. With specific reference to the 2020 electoral impasse, the CARICOM team highlighted that it affords Guyana the clear opportunity for a revision of its electoral governance system, most notably, the GECOM “on the basis of its less than stellar performance.”
I n t h e i r recommendations, the report stated that “A political audit of GECOM, both the Commission and administrative arm is urgently warranted,” and made a call on the incoming victors to expedite one immediately citing that “GECOM betrayed its obligations to behave impartially and independently.” Additionally, the team urged an immediate rethinking of the structural organization of GECOM, particularly with respect to the selection of Commissioner.
“To maintain GECOM in its present form would be a tragedy for the nation and the people of Guyana. GECOM is a creature of the dominant political parties, and there is consequently little interest on the part of the Commissioners in ensuring that elections and the electoral environment are conducive to integrity based elections which will reflect the will of the people.” The Commissioners, the team said, “are primarily, though not exclusively, dominated by the ethos of posting their respective parties to political victory.”
Slain: Andy Williams him. Visits were even made to the rum shop where he was reportedly seen buying the liquor and the chaser but no one knew where he subsequently went. A few days later, the man's family was informed that police had fished out a decomposed body of a man from a canal at Meten-Meer-Zorg. It was not until they had seen a photo of the corpse that they realized that Williams had died. The victim had recently re-migrated only four months ago from neighbouring Venezuela in search of work and had intended to send money back home for his family.
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Tuesday June 16, 2020
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Tuesday June 16, 2020
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Guyana can use COVID-19 effects to restructure macro economy - local Economist O
pportunities e x i s t f o r macroeconomic restricting in the wake of the impact of the novel coronavirus a local economist is arguing, A recent United Nations (UN) Special Report on the economic impacts of COVID-19 on Latin America and the Caribbean has pointed out that the region can face an expected fall of 1.8% in its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2020 due to the pandemic. The region had a projection of a maximum of 1.3% growth in 2020. However, this changed due to the current crisis. The report pointed that the final economic impact will however; depend on the actions taken at the national, regional and global levels. Each country's level of impact depends on its economic structure. Economist Joel Bhagwandin is of the belief that Guyana can use this crisis to its advantage to restructure its economy and create fiscal stability.
Joel Bhagwandin, Local Economist The report highlighted that the region has been a ff e c t e d t h r o u g h f i v e external transmission channels. Beginning with the decline in economic activity of the region's main trading partners and the effects of that; the report pointed out that the region is heavily dependent on exports and a Global recession will
reduce both the volume and value of these. But, this again is dependent on the sectoral structure of each individual country. The second factor listed in the drop in commodity prices. The Report noted that “the deflation in global demand will play a huge role in the decrease in commodity prices. The sharp decline in commodity prices and in the terms of trade will have a heavy negative impact on the income levels on economies that depend on those exports. These impacts however, will vary based on the country affected.” Further, the geopolitical crisis in the oil market led to a 24% reduction in prices in less than a week early March. The interruption of global value chains is the third factor that is considered in the report. The disruption of supply chains starting with Chinese suppliers followed by producers in Europe and the United States, would mainly affect Mexico and B r a z i l , w h o s e
manufacturing sector are the largest in the region. The report further stated that “lower demand for tourism services will also create a huge blow on Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS).” Greater risk aversion and worsening global financial conditions is the final factor listed as responsible for the projected decline in Latin America and the Caribbean. “This leads to higher demand for safe assets (for example, rates of return for on United States Securities have reached historically low levels), lower demand for the region's financial assets and s i g n i f i c a n t depreciation of its countries' currencies, as is currently the case,” the report said. Taking these factors into consideration Bhagwandin told Kaieteur News that “the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated closure of the borders and a halt, more or less to global trade except for essential items such as medical and food supplies. This, together with low oil
prices, effectively would have allowed for savings in fuel imports which is usually in excess of US$500 million. More so, a decline in imports on other consumer goods and with the upsurge in gold price is helping to stabilize the economy, inter alia, maintaining a stable exchange rate.” He added that “The policymakers ought to recognize, henceforth, the opportunities present to rebuild the economy starting with food security.” Bhagwandin went on to say that despite not knowing when the current crisis will come to an end, “the growing demand for food in the region presents opportunity to scale up the country's productive capacity and channel the appropriate investments in this sector. “ A d d i t i o n a l l y, he pointed out that “on the fiscal side, the opportunity for government to negotiate debt forgiveness and restructuring to create the much-needed fiscal space to facilitate the rebuilding of the economy – ought to be
of paramount recognition and importance.” The economist has over the past few months contended that Guyana could be on the verge of bankruptcy should government borrowing from the central bank and spending on consumption goods continue at the rate it was. “This coupled,” he argued, “with a significant widening of the balance of payment deficit driven largely by imports of capital goods for the oil and gas related activities and a dwindling international reserve from the equivalent of 4 – 5 months' worth of import cover to less than two months' worth of import cover. These trends would have certainly induced a sharp depreciation in the exchange rate, depletion of the reserve, and a mountain of domestic debt that ought to be repaid from tax revenues, and, the inability to service external debt if the international reserve is depleted to record low level.”
Chinese state-owned company taking over... From page 13 would like to contribute to the existing good economic, trade, cultural and intergovernmental relations between China and PNG. However, if Zijin's investment in Porgera mine is not properly protected by the PNG government, I am afraid there will be significant negative impact on the bilateral relations between China and PNG.” China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said in a statement seen by Reuters that the legitimate interests of Chinese firms have to be effectively protected. Should the government of Papua New Guinea fail to return the license to Zijin a n d i t s p a r t n e r, b o t h companies pledged to bring the full strength of their legal team to challenge the decision. BNL in particular, has also committed to going after any financial loss suffered during this time. Kaieteur News would have reported on Sunday last that Zijin had purchased the cash-strapped Guyana Goldfields for a whopping
C$323M and would soon be working on the Canadian firm's Aurora Goldmine. The purchase would be integral to Zijin's portfolio after losing the Papua New Guinea license. Dongxing Securities Co., Ltd., a Chinese investment bank and brokerage firm had said that without the Porgera mine, Zijin's 2020 gold production is expected to decline by 37 t o n s , o r 9 . 3 % . (https://www.caixinglobal. com/2020-04-29/chinaszijin-mining-seeks-goldelsewhere-after-losingpapua-new-guinea-mine101548312.html). Following extensive research, Kaieteur News found and published in a Sunday news item that the Chinese stat- owned company that will be developing the Guyana Goldfields' Aurora Mine, has a horrifying environmental track record. Numerous international reports note that on July 3 and July 16, 2010, acid waste had escaped the company's copper plant in China's
Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, James Marape
Chairman of Zijin's Board of Directors, Chen Jinghe
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says legitimate interests of Chinese firms have to be effectively protected. Fujian province and contaminated the Ting River. The accident was said to be the size of the BP deep-water oil spill, one of the largest in the history of the petroleum industry. The copper plant manager, deputy manager and head of environment were detained
and subsequently sent to jail because the company waited nine days before revealing the incident. In 2011, a court in the southeastern Fujian province ordered the Zijin Mining Group to pay a criminal fine of USD $4.6 million for the 2.4 million
gallon toxic spill that contaminated the local river and poisoned 2,000 metric tons of fish, enough to feed 72,000 residents for a year. As a result of the spill, 210,000 residents of the area were without potable water and there were notable increases in cancer c a s e s . (https://steelguru.com/steel/ zijin-mining-fined-usd-5million-for-toxic-spill-atcopper-mine/203663) In 2010, Reuters had published that a dam at a tin mine run by a Zijin
subsidiary collapsed during heavy rains, burying a nearby village in the Guangdong province. The landslide of waste from the mine left 28 people dead or missing. Reuters noted that Zijin had run into trouble with collapsed dams before. Late in 2006, a tailings dam breach at Zijin's Shuiyindong mine in Guizhou province dumped cyanide-laced residue into a stream, and forced the mine to close for months. Kaieteur News also found that a mining boom, thanks to the Chinese economy's insatiable demand for metals, left the countryside studded with unsafe tailings dams that liquefy under pounding rains. In the worst such accident, 276 people were killed when a tailings dam at an iron mine gave way in Shanxi Province in September, 2008. A similar collapse the previous month in the same province killed 43 people, but was covered up ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
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Tuesday June 16, 2020
Tuesday June 16, 2020
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Kaieteur News
GECOM continues deliberations today By Shikema Dey The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is set to continue discussions today, after failing to arrive at a conclusion with respect to the declaration of the victors of the March 2, 2020 Elections at their Monday meeting. The six-member Commission along with the GECOM Chair, Ret’d Justice Claudette Singh, met at the Commission Headquarters in Kingston to deliberate on the Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield’s report along with the report from the CARICOM Scrutinizing Team as mandated by the Gazetted Order. After its conclusion, Commissioner Sase Gunraj declined to address the media, citing that, “At this point, I will prefer to refrain from comment until the discussions move a bit further on.”
Father of 4 seeks public assistance due to medical... From page 7 very thankful for everything that people do for us and the lil help we get.” Individuals who wish to assist the family can contact them on telephone numbers 691-8749 or 673-2035. Contact can also be made with Young Pioneers (YP) a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), which has been working along with the family via their Facebook page or on telephone number 669-2619.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Vincent Alexander noted that there were no “in depth” discussions on the report by the CEO or the CARICOM report, but he sought “clarification” on key issues emerging from the electoral process. Further, when asked to provide an outline of the discussions, Alexander stated that “The meeting sought to commence discussions on the report from the CEO. I think in the first instance we had to get to the point of determining whether or not, the observation reports would be discussed, and there were those who sought to contend we needed to cut to the chase and simply give effect to the tabulation.” Among those issues were the allegations of dead and migrant voters, raised by the APNU+AFC Coalition throughout the national recount process. The Coalition did not, however, pro v i d e substantial evidence to support their claims. Alexander, however, said that the Commission was provided with “evidence” by the Secretariat to verify that those claims. “The Secretariat has now provided us with documentation to show that
they have in fact gotten verification in relation to deaths and migrations,” he said. That verification he said confirmed “that there are persons who have migrated who have been verified by the Chief Immigration Officer (CIO) as not being in the country at the time of elections but votes were cast in their name. Similarly, persons who have died, and votes have been cast in their name.” Off the top of his head, Alexander said the Commission is in receipt of 47 names with respect to the dead voters and over 500 names of migrant voters. It should be noted that the GECOM Chair, had tasked the party with providing evidence to back up allegations. In fact, she stated in plain terms that “he who asserts must prove.” However, shortly after, it was the GECOM Chair herself who wrote to the Immigration Officer seeking confirmation of a list of 207 names sent to by the Coalition. In response, head of the immigration office, Police Commissioner Leslie James sent a list containing 172
names of persons which he s a i d w e r e o ut of the jurisdiction on E-day and could not cast their ballot. The Coalition also sent another list containing 301 names of persons they claimed were out of the jurisdiction. From both lists, over 24 persons have come forward to debunk the Coalition’s claims. When asked whether these anomalies are significant enough to impact the will of the people, Alexander answered “We are not yet complete in the process of the question of the will of the people. We still have issues; I still have issues with respect to the 81 persons in Sophia whose ballots were not counted, it is still a tremendous difficulty for me, the 47 boxes from the East Coast for which there was absolutely no documentation so one has to be rather holistic.” The Commission, according to the Gazetted Order is expected to make a declaration today. Asked whether the Nation can expect the results today, Alexander stated that “In this week, there will be a final pronouncement that may include a declaration.”
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The following day, when the woman arrived at the address she realized that she was the only person there for the photo shoot. The woman then enquired about the others and she was told that they will be there shortly. After some time, the woman decided to leave but Gibbons then allegedly prevented her from doing so and
told her she should take off her clothes while they wait on the other women. Gibbons then allegedly ripped off the woman's clothing and started touching her private parts. The woman tried to put up a fight, but Gibbons overpowered her and reportedly engaged in sexual penetration with her without her consent. Gibbons then prevented the woman from leaving his house and the following day she was released to go home. The woman went to the nearest Police Station and made a report. An investigation was launched and Gibbons was later arrested and charged for two counts of rape. However, Gibbons was not charged for keeping the women locked away against their will. After listening to the facts, Magistrate Ally-Seepaul remanded Gibbons to prison until July 23, 2020, and transferred the matter to the Wales Magistrate's Court.
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Women allegedly raped while looking for... From page 8 under the pretence of securing a job. On the day in question, the defendant approached the woman at the Vreed-en-Hoop Stelling and he told her about a “photo shoot” that was scheduled for the following day. The woman agreed to take the job and Gibbons gave her the address.
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Kaieteur News
Tuesday June 16, 2020
Tuesday June 16, 2020
Husbands steals headlines with sparkling triple TORONTO, Canada, CMC – Barbadian reinsman Patrick Husbands won three of his six rides on Sunday’s 11-race card, to make all the headlines and close in on the lead at prestigious Woodbine. The 47-year-old captured race three aboard 8-1 chance Solidify, followed up in race seven with 4-1 choice Juxtapose before triumphing in the day’s final race with 9-2 bet Silent Causeway. After going winless from his first 18 rides of the new season, Husbands now has five wins from 25 outings, to be tied in fourth with Gary Boulanger and Luis Contreras. Kazushi Kimura leads a three-way tie at the top with Emma Jayne Wilson and Justin Stein, all on six wins.
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Kaieteur News
A seven-times Woodbine champion, Husbands tasted success with his first ride of the day in a CAN$108 700 allowance optional claiming for three-year-olds and upward when he carried the four-year-old bay gelding Solidify to a 2-¾ length victory. Going seven furlongs, Husbands got away slowly along the rails to trail with Split My Pants, as Magic Tapit and favourite Combative tussled for the lead through fractions of 23.71 seconds for the quarter and 46.87 for the half. However, Husbands brought Solidify with a thundering run through the final turn and into the stretch, reeling in the leaders before charging to the wire
impressively under a brisk hands-ride. Husbands’s second came in a six-furlong sprint when he made virtually all the running with Juxtapose to get the better of the three-yearold and upward fillies and mares by 1-¼ lengths. Juxtapose along the rails duelled with Cindervella through the first quarter in 23.01 before Husbands got the three-year-old filly to the front approaching the halfmile, to carve out a handy lead in the lane. Piquet came with a late run but Juxtapose had more than enough to get home safely. Husbands reserved perhaps his most dominant effort for the $64 300 race 11 when he partnered with three-
Tuesday June 16, 2020 ARIES (Mar. 21–Apr. 19) Matters involving creativity, romance, and children could require considerable thought today, Aries. Some exciting new options may be available to you and your loved ones.
LIBRA (Sept. 23–Oct. 22) Contemplation is the word for today. At some point, you might receive a call from a friend wanting advice on a serious decision. Don't be surprised if you spend more time listening than advising.
TAURUS(Apr.20–May20) Matters involving the home could suddenly grow serious. This is a positive development, Taurus, but new possibilities could be opening up and force you to make a decision.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23–Nov. 21) Today much of your mental - and possibly physical energy could be directed at career matters. You might reevaluate goals and ambitions, Scorpio, and consider other possibilities.
GEMINI (May 21–June 20) Today you might consider entering into a business partnership with a relative or neighbor. This could show promise of success, Gemini, and is definitely worth serious consideration.
SAGIT(Nov.22–Dec.21) The desire for personal and career advancement could cause you to consider furthering your education in some way, Sagittarius.
CANCER (June 21–July 22) The value of any investment you may have made in land, including your home, could come into your thoughts today. Whatever time and energy you've put into it is likely to pay off. LEO (July 23–Aug. 22) A partnership of some kind, perhaps business, perhaps romantic, is likely to be on your mind today. You might want to seriously consider whether or not it has a future. VIRGO (Aug. 23–Sept. 22) A lot of serious matters are on your mind, perhaps involving plans for the future. It's likely that you'll want to stay home today and do some contemplating.
CAPRI (Dec. 22–Jan. 19) Today you're apt to be a bit preoccupied, Capricorn. You might find yourself considering concepts that others think are strange and impractical. AQUARIUS(Jan.20–Feb.18) Today is likely to be a gratifying day, Aquarius, but perhaps more serious than you'd planned. A longtime friend might call and want to talk. PISCES (Feb. 19–Mar. 20) Career and business matters are likely to be very much on your mind today, Pisces. Perhaps a new opportunity has come your way, or you're thinking of becoming involved in a new enterprise on your own or with a partner.
year-old dark bay filly Silent Causeway to dismiss the three-year-old and upward maiden fillies and mares by eight lengths in a frontrunning effort. Silent Causeway breezed through the first quarter in 22.68, taking with her Simply a Zoomer and 5-2 favourite Linda Loves Lace, with the remainder of the field chasing. Husbands left the final turn with a three-length lead and then pulled a fabulous effort out of Silent Causeway to leave the field in their wake.
Berger wins playoff at... From page 28 shot found a greenside bunker. Yet Berger added birdies at two of his last five holes to reach the playoff. Schauffele (69) missed the playoff by one stroke after his par putt from two feet at the 17th also lipped out. Among the others who finished one shot back of the playoff was Britain’s Justin Rose (66) and Bryson DeChambeau (66). Three-times major champion Jordan Spieth started the final round one shot off the lead but hit just 5 of 14 fairways and 10 of 18 greens in regulation en route to a one-over-par 71 that left him in a tie for 10th place. Despite not managing to snap a nearly three-year victory drought, Spieth took comfort in the state of his game after a lengthy layoff. “I’m making those putts from mid to long range and I’m driving the ball in good position,” said Spieth. “So it’s really just cleaning up the wedges and stuff that I’m normally really sharp with that certainly had a bit of rust on it.” World number one Rory McIlroy began the day three shots off the lead but struggled over the front nine en route to a four-over-par 74 that left him nine shots adrift and in a share of 32nd place.
West Indies quicks... From page 30 conference call. “I don’t know about living up to the greats, they’ve got to forge their own identity.” “We’ve (also) got a group of youngsters coming through,” he added, citing Chemar Holder and Oshane Thomas. Estwick, a former Barbados paceman, said the new crop of were showing the stamina displayed by previous generations. “What we’ve done is improve our fitness,” he said. “Now you can sustain pressure. If you look back at the 80s, that’s one thing the fast bowlers had.” The West Indies also had formidable strength in depth in their golden era. “When I played firstclass cricket in the 80s, we had six outstanding fast bowlers,” recalled Estwick. “But the likes of Wayne Daniel and Sylvester Clarke
only played 10 and 11 Tests and yet they both had about 900 first-class wickets each.” Next month’s series will be played behind closed doors as a precaution against the spread of COVID-19 but Estwick said England new-ball veterans Stuart Broad and James Anderson would be just as dangerous without home support. “The ’12th man’ isn’t going to be there but I don’t think experienced bowlers like Broad and Anderson will be too fazed by the crowd not being there,” he said. Estwick said there had been some benefits to the quarantine restrictions. “It’s a different situation but we’ve spent a bit more time as a group together. The spirit has been good. We’ve got no complaints with the way things have gone so far. The excuses stop now.”
Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua... From page 26 mega-money making fight with Mexican Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez. “That’s what he deserves, the guy’s a lowlife,” he told Talksport. “He’s an extremely bad representative for the sport we all love. Why should he fight Canelo when he’s going to go in there and try and survive for the money?” The animosity between these two is something else. A rematch has to happen at some point in their careers, for the build-up alone, if nothing else. Mike Tyson teaches UFC’s Henry Cejudo Who better to learn from than the former heavyweight
champion of the world and a man once hailed as ‘the baddest man on the planet’? Mike Tyson - who wants to fight again this year at the age of 53 - has been putting UFC star Henry Cejudo through his paces. Olympic gold medallist Cejudo, 33, went on to become UFC bantamweight champion, before retiring from mixed martial arts last month. And it seems he and Tyson have built up quite the friendship. They appeared together at an All Elite Wrestling event last month and are now working together in the gym, with ‘Iron Mike’ sharing the secrets behind those infamous and explosive uppercuts and hooks…
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Kaieteur News
CWI Professional Players draft
Guyana Jaguars select Imlach, Lewis; Nedd joins LI Hurricanes By Zaheer Mohamed Five-time champions Guyana Jaguars have selected wicket-keeper batsman Tevin Imlach and Jamaican Ramaal Lewis in their 15-member squad following the Cricket West Indies (CWI) professional players draft for the Colonial Medical Insurance Super50 Cup and the West Indies Four-Day Championship which was held yesterday via a Zoom meeting. Imlach who plays for Demerara Cricket Club (DCC) and was part of the West Indies U19 team that won the U19 World Cup in 2016 has been rewarded for his consistent performances over the years, while Lewis has been plying his trade in Guyana for a number of years. Guyanese Ashmead Nedd, also of DCC, was
selected by the Leeward Islands Hurricanes as their first-round pick in what was seen as a vital move in the draft. Nedd has shown lots of promise early in his career, winning regional U15 and U19 titles with the Guyana team. He was one of the leading performers for the West Indies at the ICC Under-19 World Cup in South Africa earlier this year. A member of the West Indies Emerging Players squad that won the Colonial Medical Insurance Super50 Cup last November, Nedd will add strength to the Hurricanes bowling attack. West Indies Under-19 captain Kimani Melius was picked by the Windward Islands Volcanoes while former Barbados Pride Captain Kevin Stoute, with 76 first class matches under his
Akshaya Persaud belt will join Melius at the Windward Islands Volcanoes. Fast bowler Jayden Seales was contracted by the Trinidad and Tobago Red Force; both Melius and Seales were acquired ahead of the draft as pre-selected players by the respective franchises. Kyle Hope, who played five Test matches and seven One-Day Internationals in
2017, has moved to Barbados Pride. The list of players selected is; ROUND 1- Leewards Hurricanes - Ashmead Nedd; Windward Volcanoes - Kevin Stoute; Jamaica Scorpions Odean Smith; Guyana Jaguars - Ramaal Lewis; TT Red Force - Bryan Charles; Barbados Pride - Kyle Hope ROUND 2 - Leewards Hurricanes - Tyrone Williams Jr.; Windwards Volcanoes Larry Edwards; Guyana Jaguars - Tevin Imlach; Jamaica Scorpions - Alwyn Williams; TT Red Force Isaiah Rajah; Barbados Pride - Shamar Springer. In a CWI media release, CWI’s Director of Cricket Jimmy Adams said, “I am pleased to have gotten the regional franchise draft completed. Franchises can
now focus on implementing post-lockdown training to gradually build towards their full programs. Obviously we are all hopeful that we will soon be given the all-clear by the respective Governments to resume full franchise operations.” The draft was conducted over two rounds where each franchise was asked to pick a player in each round. Based on CWI’s draft structure, each franchise will contract a minimum of 15 players, 13 preselected and the two from the player pool during the live draft. For the 2020-21 season, each franchise was allocated a pick number according to their final league position and performance of the franchise in the 2019-20 West Indies Championship. The CWI Board of Directors has agreed that the
requirement to contract at least two players from outside of the Franchise territory will not apply to the 2020/21 season. In keeping with a wide range of short-term recommendations from the CWI Financial Strategy Advisory Committee that were approved by the Board of Directors at the end of May, all contracts will be awarded for a six-month term, at a 50% reduced value. Among those that were retained by the Guyana Franchise as protected players are; Veerasammy Permaul, Chandrapaul Hemraj, Keon Joseph and Nial Smith. The event was monitored by CWI’s auditors KPMG to ensure that the process was carried out efficiently and smoothly. Below are the full squads of each franchise:
Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua ‘agreed’ - but Dillian Whyte takes legal action BBC Sport - Fury-AJ ‘agreed’ - but Whyte takes legal action. It was an announcement that surprised many in boxing last week as world champions Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua agreed financial terms for a twofight deal in 2021. Two Britons. For all of the belts. In the heavyweight division. Can it get any better than this? We’ve already started debating about who wins and how. In fact, Britain’s WBO super-middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders is so
confident his pal Fury will become the undisputed champion that he told IFL TV he is willing to bet the entire purse for his next fight on it. But before we get too excited - and not wanting to put a dampener on your optimism there are a few obstacles to overcome before we can be completely confident Fury-AJ will actually happen. Joshua is scheduled to face Bulgarian Kubrat Pulev - the IBF mandatory challenger - next, while Fury must first overcome Deontay Wilder again. Boxing fans, rightly, were quick to point out winning those
fights isn’t a given for the champions… And what about Dillian Whyte? The Briton is the mandatory challenger for Fury’s WBC belt. And he’s been in the number one challenger position for nearly 1,000 days. The ‘Body Snatcher’ is the ‘interim’ champion and was told he will get his shot by February 2021, before the announcement of the Fury-Joshua two-fight agreement. Well it seems his patience has worn out after WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman confirmed Whyte has started
legal proceedings against the sanctioning body over the date of his mandatory shot. “There is a procedure with regards to the date of the mandatory in the heavyweight division,” Sulaiman told Sky Sports. “Upon direct advice of WBC legal counsel I am not in position to discuss any further.” Earlier in the week, Whyte’s brother said the heavyweight had “been failed” by promoter Eddie Hearn, who also represents Joshua. “It’s unfair, it’s a bitter bill
to swallow,” Dean Whyte told IFL TV. But Matchroom Boxing’s Hearn still expects Whyte to face Fury by February 2021 and told Sky Sports the Londoner could even step in for Wilder, should the American withdraw from his world-title rematch. That said, it doesn’t seem Whyte is on Fury’s radar for the time being. “I’ve fought the most vicious punchers in their own countries. I don’t fear a stocky plodder who comes forward with no power,” the Fury told Dev Sahni on The
Lockdown Lowdown… Eubank Jr takes dig at Saunders There’s little doubt some boxing ‘rivalries’ are generated to build pre-fight hype. But there is definitely no love lost between former foes Chris Eubank Jr and Billy Joe Saunders. After Saunders won their 2016 clash on points, the backand-forth trash continued. And almost six years later, it is still going strong. Eubank Jr was asked for his thoughts on Saunders potentially missing out on a (Continued on page 25)
Tuesday June 16, 2020
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Chinese GP undecided over two F1 races proposal Autosport - Shanghai Sports Bureau boss Xu Bin has said the city government has not made any decision on whether to host two Formula 1 races this year despite having a proposal on the table. Following the announcement of the opening eight races on the first part of the revised 2020 calendar, F1 is pushing to finalise the second half of the season over the next few weeks. The uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated F1’s reshaped calendar plans, with the sport’s organisers considering a contingency with more double-header races, while also racing at circuits not on the original 2020 F1 calendar including Hockenheim and the Algarve circuit. The Chinese Grand Prix was originally postponed in February when the coronavirus crisis hit the country. Speaking to Shanghai People’s Radio this morning, Mr Xu confirmed the city is working on bringing back
Chinese GP undecided over two races proposal. international events, including the Chinese GP and the ATP Masters 1000 Shanghai tennis tournament. “International sport organisations care a lot about these world-class sport events in China and Shanghai,” said the head of the Shanghai Sports Bureau. “Despite a lot of changes
of our events due to the pandemic, we have received support from international sport organisations and national associations for some of our events. We would be allowed to hold the events in Shanghai at a suitable time in the second half of the year, depending on the situation of the pandemic.” Asked about the
Ezekiel Elliott one of several Cowboys, Texans players to test positive for COVID-19 Yahoo Sports - Several members of the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans have reportedly tested positive for COVID-19, according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. The exact number of players from each team is unknown. The identity of most of the players is unknown, but Ezekiel Elliott’s agent confirmed to Rapoport that the Cowboys running back has tested positive for COVID-19. According to Rapoport, it is believed that these players did not catch the coronavirus in team facilities. Texas is currently in the throes of a major COVID-19 surge, with the state setting new records for hospitalizations in six of the past seven days. Just three days after Houston opened up to 75 percent capacity, CBS News reported on Monday that city officials are considering new stay-athome orders and could possibly turn the Texans’ NRG Stadium into a temporary COVID-19 hospital. Texas isn’t alone. It’s one of more than 20 states that
Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott. (AP Photo/David Richard) have recorded increases in COVID-19 infections, including Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Washington, and other states with NFL teams. This feels like an ominous development, despite the NFL’s chief medical expert
saying in early June that he was “very optimistic” that football would be played in the fall. A surge in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations could very possibly change that forecast.
possibility of S h a n g h a i double-header, Mr Xu said: “No decision has been made yet. It’s proposed by FOM. “F1 has announced they will resume the opening eight European races, without any rounds in Asia. The event originally scheduled has been postponed to the second half of the year.
“FOM asked whether we could host two races in Shanghai in the discussion. It’s not been decided. It will depend on the situation of pandemic.” Last week, F1 cancelled the Singapore and Japanese GPs, plus the Azerbaijan GP, which has left only the Chinese and new Vietnamese rounds as options to race in
East Asia in 2020. F1 first raced in Shanghai in 2004, with the Chinese GP remaining an ever-present fixture on the calendar. Last year’s race in China marked the F1’s 1000th race, while Chinese Formula 2 driver Guanyu Zhou took part in demonstration runs in an F1 car as part of the celebrations.
Football must take ‘giant leap’ to fight racism - Neville (Reuters) - Former England international Gary Neville says words are not enough to combat racism in football and that he is “ashamed” he did not fight harder against it when he was a player. The former Manchester United defender made the comments in the wake of the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. “Forget campaigns. Forget words. It has to be actions,” Neville said ahead of the Premier League’s restart tomorrow following a three-month stoppage due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “We need to take a giant leap rather than minute steps each year. “I’m not going to hide away from it. We need education, we need protocols and processes in place which basically reverse what’s been happening in our country.” Neville said he should
England coach Gary Neville during training at Tottenham Hotspur Training Ground, Hertfordshire. (Action Images via Reuters/Andrew Couldridge Livepic) have fought harder against racism during his playing days. “The reality is we put racial abuse in the same category as the abuse we would receive for playing for Manchester United or England. We didn’t think. We
just got on with it,” the 45year-old said. “It’s appalling and I’m ashamed of the fact for someone who ... fought for players’ rights at nearly every level, I didn’t fight hard enough on this.”
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Tuesday June 16, 2020
Kaieteur News
World Athletics releases Health & Safety Guidelines for competitions As the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) begin to put things in place for the National Senior Championships for August 89 this year, World Athletics has published a set of health and safety guidelines to assist competition organisers to minimise the risk of spreading coronavirus when staging instadium outdoor events during the current pandemic. The guidelines, which were drafted by World Athletics’ Health and Science Department, also address the post-peak period, as described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and are based on scientific and medical knowledge of the virus responsible for Covid19. The document offers guidance for professional athletes, support staff, technical officials, workforce, volunteers, medical staff and media. Although it doesn’t include guidelines regarding spectators, the WHO has produced a document and risk-assessment tools for mass gatherings. Competition organisers are advised to undertake a four-point risk assessment for all accredited attendants. If an individual scores two or higher, it is recommended that they should undergo a medical clearance protocol before the event. Other recommendations include: At the stadium Spectators and accredited personnel should have two
World Athletics provides health and safety guidelines to help organisers return to competition. completely separate entrances and the flows should not cross. Accredited personnel should only be granted access to the competition venue if wearing a face mask and with their personal hand sanitizer. Face masks should be worn by everyone in the stadium, with the exception of athletes when warming up or competing in their event. Warm-up zones should be large open-air areas within a short walking distance of the competition stadium, and access to it should be strictly controlled. Athletes should be invited to enter the warmup area following a specific timetable. All accredited personnel should wear a mask and wash their hands
before entering warm-up zones or dedicated toilets. Masks should also be worn in call rooms, which should be arranged in an outdoor location. It is also mandatory to disinfect chairs between each use. In competition The number of people on the field of play should be kept to a minimum, and officials who will be coming into close contact with athletes should wear protective glasses or a plastic face shield, in addition to their mask. Once athletes have crossed the finish line, they should try to keep their distance from the public and officials, where possible, until they collect their belongings
from the call room. Specific guidelines for individual disciplines: - starting blocks should be cleaned between each race - chlorine should be added to the water jump for the steeplechase - relay batons should be cleaned between each use, and relay teams should be discouraged from gathering or hugging after a race - the use of hand sanitizer should be recommended before each attempt in vertical jumps - officials should clean the landing mat between each jump, using a mop and virucidal solution or use a thin layer of recyclable plastic or tissue that can be placed on the jumping mat-
Berger wins playoff at Colonial in PGA Tour’s return from COVID-19 (Reuters) - Daniel Berger emerged from a tightlybunched leaderboard to win the PGA Tour’s first tournament back after a three-month COVID-19 break with a playoff victory at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas on Sunday. Berger, who needed a birdie on the final hole of his regulation round to make the playoff, sealed the win on the first extra hole with a rock-solid par moments before fellow American Collin Morikawa watched his putt from in close cruelly lip out. When Berger sealed the win there was a brief handshake and hug with his caddie but no roars to be heard since Colonial Country Club was closed all week to the general public to help prevent spread of the
novel coronavirus. “I grinded so hard the last two months to be in this position and I am just so thankful that all the hard work paid off,” said Berger, who had top-10 finishes in his three starts before the PGA Tour halted action in midMarch. Berger, who began the action-packed day two shots off overnight leader Xander Schauffele, carded a fourunder-par 66 to reach 15 under for the week. The leaderboard at the start of the final round featured many of the game’s best players and the action began with 13 golfers within three shots of Schauffele. Berger made his move early with three birdies over his first eight holes before a lone bogey at the par-four ninth where his approach (Continued on page 25)
Daniel Berger celebrates winning the Charles Schwab Challenge golf tournament at Colonial Country Club. (Raymond Carlin III-USA TODAY Sports)
sand in jumping pits should be mixed with a solution that contains biodegradable and non-skinaggressive virucide agent - officials who handle throwing implements should clean their hands or use disposable gloves after each
handling - in combined events, the room used by athletes to recover between disciplines should be open-air, if possible. Coaches should be encouraged to interact with their athletes using electronic devices.
Australia Cricket board chief Roberts to be axed - reports MELBOURNE (Reuters) Cricket Australia (CA) Chief Executive Kevin Roberts is set to be replaced by an interim CEO after losing support of the board over his stewardship of the game during the coronavirus shutdown, local media reported yesterday. Members of the board held an emergency meeting on Sunday to put handover arrangements in place for a replacement, The Australian newspaper said. The reports did not give details about the interim CEO, while CA did not immediately comment when contacted by Reuters. Roberts has been criticised for his handling of the shutdown since a decision to furlough about 80% of staff at head office in April to “proactively” manage the impact of COVID-19. State associations that nominate members to the CA board have pushed back against proposed cuts to their grants, while the players’ union has called for dispute resolution with the governing body after rejecting its forward estimates for the revenue that underpins player payments. CA’s decision to snub Perth as a venue for one of the four test matches in the
lucrative India tour in the home summer also angered Western Australia’s state association. Roberts said earlier this month the domestic game stood to lose A$80 million (£43.4 million) due to COVID19, with fans barred from stadiums and the Twenty20 World Cup to be held in Australia in October likely to be postponed. But with the India tour for December all but confirmed and spectators expected to return to stadiums from next month as COVID-19 infections dwindle, media pundits have accused Roberts of concocting a financial disaster. “The good news for cricket has put further pressure on Roberts with states and players emboldened about their claims the game is not facing a financial crisis,” The Australian said. Roberts would become the third CEO of a major Australian sport to lose their job during the coronavirus outbreak, with National Rugby League boss Todd Greenberg and Rugby Australia chief Raelene Castle stepping down in recent months.
TuesdayJune June16, 16,2020 2020 Tuesday
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Kaieteur News Kaieteur News
Business Community donate to Canje youths During this time of the COVID-19 pandemic and the struggles faced by many in dealing with all that has been going on around them, the Business Community stakeholders of # 2 Village East Canje, donated face mask and a quantity of hampers to needy children of the Police Youth Club in the Angoy’s Avenue, New Amsterdam area. Chief Inspector Michael Newland, OC Number One East Coast Berbice, New Amsterdam Canje and East Bank Berbice along with CRO Personnel Rural Constable Cherryann Knights, assisted the Business Stakeholders with the task of presenting the children with the items. The police in their effort to battle illicit activities and instill decent values in the youths in the Berbice area, has set up several youth clubs and have been working with them to challenge them to be involved in sports and other gainful activities. With the challenge of no activities due to the COVID 19 and many from underprivileged homes, the police and the business community decided to reach out.
Chief Inspector Michael Newland is seen assisting the business stakeholders in handing out the hampers resently.
Pace attack can hurt England, warns veteran Roach MANCHESTER, England, CMC – Experienced seamer Kemar R o a c h b e l i e v e s We s t Indies’ pace attack can hurt England but says they will need to execute properly and stick to bowling plans in order to retain the coveted Wisden Trophy. The 30-year-old Roach, who has emerged as the leader of the Windies pace battery in recent times, said memories from the series win in the Caribbean last year were still fresh, and that would also serve as a motivation. “I think it’s about executing our plans as best as we can,” Roach told reporters via Zoom from quarantine at Old Trafford here. “Obviously England at home is a very tough side so I think for us it’s just going out there with a team plan, sticking to it and adjusting where we see fit. “Once we stick to our plans, once we go out there and be confident, obviously get stuck into the English batting lineup, we stand a great chance of taking that trophy back home.” He added: “I don’t see any pressure at all. I think we have fantastic bowling plans with Roddy Estwick the
Kemar Roach in the nets in England. (CWI) bowling coach. I think we communicate very well and we also plan very well. “We have Shannon (Gabriel) back as well in the squad which is fantastic. He will need to prove his fitness and obviously work his way
back into the Test side but I think me, Jason (Holder), Shannon, Alzarri (Joseph) [are up for the task]. “We have some other guys coming through that have been doing very well in the domestic regional
tournaments back home, so I’m looking forward to bowling with and learning from these guys as I try to teach them as well.” Last year, Roach, Joseph, Gabriel and Holder took 44 wickets among them as West Indies stunned England 2-1 in a three-Test rubber to reclaim the Wisden after a decade. The Windies attack bowled with pace and aggression on pitches that provided more than ample assistance, leaving the tourists much vaunted batting lineup struggling to cope. Roach, who finished with 18 wickets in that series at 13 runs apiece, said while conditions in England were different, the seam attack planned to maintain their intensity. “ I t ’s d i ff e r e n t conditions to the Caribbean – the ball does a little bit more in England – so I think we have to adjust our plans, obviously devise a great plan to come up against these English batsmen,” he pointed out. “But I don’t think our mode of attack is going to change much, you saw them in the Caribbean so it’s pretty fresh in our minds. It’s always going to be tough to play in England but
I think once we get stuck into them, we stand a great chance of defeating England.” West Indies have travelled with a 14-man squad that includes uncapped speedster Chemar Holder, who was the leading fast bowler in the recent West Indies first class championship. Gabriel is among six p a c e r s i n t h e 11 - m a n reserves with the likes of Keon Harding, Marquino Mindley, Anderson Phillip, Preston McSween and Oshane Thomas also included. Roach pointed to an improvement in pitches in the Caribbean as the reason behind the recent rise in fast bowling stocks. “I think that [is because] the pitches in the Caribbean have improved. I think curators have done
a great job preparing bouncier and greener pitches so it breeds more fast bowlers,” he noted. “We’ve always had a history of fast bowlers, we just needed a pitch to bowl on so I think that’s kudos to the curators back home in the Caribbean. “I am looking forward to our bowling lineup. I think we have done a fantastic job over the last two years and I think if we continue to work hard and always train as hard as we have been training, I think great things are ahead of us.” We s t I n d i e s w i l l undergo another week of quarantine in the biosecure facility at Old Trafford while continuing their preparation for the first Test at the Ageas Bowl in Southampton carded to bowl off July 8.
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Tuesday May 16, 2020
Today is day 88 for stranded Boxing Ambassadors in Cuba - GOG should charter a flight if no flights are available By Sean Devers On January 4, 2020, the Government of Guyana, the Guyana Olympic Association and the Guyana Boxing Association collaborated to send Olympic Boxing hopefuls Colin Lewis, Desmond Amsterdam, Dennis Thomas and Keevin Allicock for a three-month training stint in Cuba. The trip was aimed at giving the pugilists every opportunity to properly prepare for the now suspended Olympic qualifiers in Argentina which was set for last April. The 2020 Olympics were scheduled for Tokyo Japan from July 24 to August 9 but will now be contested next year due to COVID-19 virus. The quartet was scheduled to return home on March 22 despite consorted efforts by President of the Guyana Boxing Association (GBA) Steve Ninvalle to facilitate their return home after borders would have been closed due to the Pandemic. However, as today marks the 88th day of being stranded in unfamiliar cultures in a non-English speaking Island away from their families, the situation and mental condition of the boxers has become increasing worse as the unexpected delay turned from days into weeks and into months.
Director of Sports Christopher Jones Some stranded Guyanese from the USA have arrived home and Ninvalle informed that the GBA understands that over a week ago Caribbean Airlines had written to the COVID-19 Task Force seeking clearance for a flight to bring home the stranded Guyanese in the Caribbean. According to Ninvalle a response is still being awaited. “The GBA continues to do all within its power to have the quartet returned home in the earliest possible time. In recent times the GBA has even sought the assistance of local aviation savant Captain Jerry Gouveia who willing offered advice,” said a broken hearted Ninvalle yesterday. “The GBA will continue to do all in its power to have the earliest and safe return of the
Steve Ninvalle (centre) and the boxers recent in Cuba. (From left) Colin Lewis, Dennis Thomas, Keevin Allicock and Desmond Amsterdam. Boxers,” Ninvalle continued. The Boxers are now pleading with the local authorities to bring them home as frustration set in. Ninvalle had written to the Chairman of the Covid19 Task Force, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, asking the body to favourably consider a request to have the fighters returned to Guyana before June 3, the probable date for the reopening of Guyana’s borders. However, the re-opening date has been pushed back. In that letter, Ninvalle explained that the four boxers are now, frustrated,
depressed and facing psychological challenges after being stranded in Cuba for close to two months. Ninvalle reasoned that with no definitive date set for their return the situation in Cuba can only take a turn for the worse. Lewis had contacted Ninvalle and his sentiments were heart rending. In the message he said, “Good morning sir we can’t sleep at this point sir, we all are up and we very, very sad and restless we want to go home sir, the food we eat today come up back for us tonight we send it down back cause is the same thing happen again yesterday sir.” “Honestly personally we can’t take this no more sir, we have been keeping quiet for too long and it’s not well here sir, we represented Guyana with a good heart and spirit, but its time they need to let us go home sir,” Lewis pleaded. “It’s painful having to be informed of the deterioration. We would have hoped that by this time we would have received a response from the
Task Force, whether it’s no, yes or maybe. There is not a lot more that we can tell our boxers, we have asked them to hold on to be patient, but frustration has clearly stepped into the camp and we can’t say where it will go from here. “We have copied our letter to the Director of Sport and I will be checking in with him again to find out if there is any movement forward.” This situation of neglect has been a frustrating experience for Lewis, Allicock, Thomas and Amsterdam who are trying to put Guyana on the map by joining Mike Parris as the only Boxer from the English speaking Caribbean to win an Olympic Medal. Director of Sports Christopher Jones told Kaieteur Sport recently that while their return from Cuba has been approved, there were no flights coming out of Cuba. “Being out of the Country, away from their families coupled with being in a lockdown in a strange Country is taking its toll on
them, this I was told by team leader (Colin Lewis). But with the support of Ambassador and the Embassy staffers in Cuba they are trying their best to keep them in high spirits,” informed Jones two weeks ago. Repeated efforts to contact Jones yesterday to enquire about the possibility of the Government chartering a plane to bring the Boxers and the Guyanese Medical Students in Cuba home, proved futile. When contacted via whatsapp and was asked the same question, Director of Public Information government, Guyana, Imran Khan, declined to respond although he saw the message. But with declaration of a President yet to be done after Guyanese went to the polls on March 2 and a Parliament is not in place, it seems that going all out to bring home Guyana’s Sporting Ambassadors is far from a priority of Politicians from both major Parties who, in the best of times, show very little interest in sports.
West Indies quicks excite Estwick ahead of England Tests
Boxers, Coaches and Officials at the send-off with, 3rd from right the GOA Head K. Juman Yassin, while at right is GBA head Steve Ninvalle.
AFP - The West Indies are showing signs that they are developing a pace attack that could stand comparison with the great Caribbean sides of the past, assistant coach Roddy Estwick said yesterday. The West Indies were world cricket’s dominant team from the mid-1970s to the 1990s when they could call on a succession of superb fast bowlers including Michael Holding,
Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh. Their quicks also played a key role when the West Indies beat England 2-1 in the Caribbean last year. Kemar Roach, Shannon Gabriel, Alzarri Joseph and captain Jason Holder are all in the Caribbean tour party for the Test series in England. The squad are quarantining in Manchester because of the coronavirus as
they prepare for the threematch series, which starts next month. Estwick said the West Indies were “beginning to get blessed with fast bowlers again” but urged against premature comparisons with earlier generations. “We’ve got four fast bowlers we think can challenge any team in the world,” he said in a (Continued on page 25)
Tuesday June 16, 2020
Kaieteur News
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West Indies quicks excite Estwick ahead of England Tests
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Pace attack can hurt England, warns veteran Roach
West Indies assistant coach Roddy Estwick. (AFP/File/Glyn Kirk)
CWI Professional Players draft
Guyana Jaguars select Imlach, Lewis; Nedd joins LI Hurricanes
Rookie fast bowler Keon Harding prepares to send down a delivery in the nets at Old Trafford. Dillian Whyte takes legal action against the WBC after Fury-Joshua two-fight ‘agreement in principle’. (Instagram)
Ashmead Nedd (CWI)
Tevin Imlach turns one through the on-side.
Today is day 88 for stranded Boxing Ambassadors in Cuba - GOG should charter a flight if no flights are available
Tyson Fury -Anthony Joshua ‘agreed’ but Dillian Whyte takes legal action
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