guyanatimesgy.com
FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 2020
5
You can send your letters with pictures to: Guyana Times, Queens Atlantic Investment Estate Industrial Site, Ruimveldt, Georgetown, Guyana or letters@guyanatimesgy.com
Roxane Burnham to Mottley: Our steel is sharper Dear Prime Minister Mottley, After a hard day’s work, I listened to the statement by Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Chairman of Caricom, regarding the election which were just held in Guyana, and who was asked to use her good office to assist in the finality of the results of the March 2nd 2020 election. Your statement, Prime Minister, is one of blatant disregard for the respect which should be afforded a sister Caribbean State. Listening to you, Prime Minister Mottley, and knowing of all the details related to this process, you should know what occurred during the 80s, when Barbados was against Caricom’s relations with the Republic of Cuba. You should know that Barbados was a leader in the gang of seven for the inva-
sion of Grenada. You should know that this is not the first time that Guyana was threatened with expulsion from Caricom. Guyana has been down this road, and we have experience to withstand whatever you and the other members of the “cabal” may try to bring pressure on the Guyana Elections Commission. I am amazed that you would walk away from a process which you started, but maybe you came like the Trojan Horse, but you must know that our steel is sharper. Prime Minister Mottley, you are an attorney, and have been the Attorney General of Barbados, and hence should not be a stranger to truth. However, today your statement has raised serious doubts in my
mind. You were in agreement with the gazetted order which had established the process which should be followed in the recount. The process examined the ballots and identified the irregularities which were executed in a transparent manner. Among the irregularities were votes cast by the dead; votes cast by impersonation; proxy votes cast without the requisite documentation, and many more categories of irregularities. Now, as far as I am aware, Prime Minister, your mental health is optimum. So why would you want to ignore the objective and the defined recount process established by a legal process? I am indeed saddened by your behaviour, as the Chairman of Caricom, in showing your umbilical linkage to gamesmanship and the willingness to ig-
nore principles of truth and fairness. Your avoidance of these sacred principles must raise question marks in the minds of your political opponents. One does not know what a retrospective analysis might reveal for Barbados. I am sure that you are very familiar with the Order, and understood the relevance of the Observation reports in the recount process. If they were not important, why were the signatures of all parties required? What is your message, Prime Minister? Are you in fact saying that you have a comfort level with the inclusion of fraudulent votes in the electoral process of Guyana? This is indeed worrying that the Chairman of Caricom, and sitting Prime Minister, would accept fraudulent votes in a demo-
cratic process. Would you accept fraudulent votes in your Party’s elections? Guyana has its own Appeal Court, and of course its own Constitution. In a rather gross and disrespectful manner, you have issued a statement ignoring the ruling of Guyana’s Court of Appeal which, in a most bizarre manner, seeks to influence the Caribbean Court of Justice. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Prime Minister Mottley, you have ruled yourself out of the Guyanese Electoral Process, and you are likened unto the families of Ananias and Sapphira and Judas Iscariot. Additionally, your silence was deafening when your colleague Prime Minister Owen Arthur called for the expulsion of Guyana from Caricom. But as the
good book says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”. Lastly, as a University graduate and a person not wedded to mediocrity, you should not be guided by the report of your Caricom team of Observers/Scrutineers. The report was severely flawed in the sampling methodology, and filled with bias. No one who is serious will accept the report with the sampling frame and methodology. I am sure that if any of your professionals who work around you were to submit a report of that quality, you would deal with them condignly. Hence, Prime Minister, what is it that is in store for you? That is the million gram of MERCURY question. Roxane Burnham Van West-Charles
Roxane Burnham, we are in 2020
Dear Editor, Today, 115 days after a peaceful and orderly voting process, we are going through the up-and-down, in-and-out ride of the PNC ring-aroundthe-roses we won the elections, the elections must be annulled, then we won again. It seems the PNC want to change our national sports to “One, Two, Three Red Light”, and now you come at this moment to add your voice, but the young people of today will not have it. People of a bygone era should just stay quiet. If you
are following the Black Lives Matter protest, you should be aware that, all over the world, oppressors’ statues and names are being removed. While you sit in Miami, the residents of Roxane Burnham Gardens have not seen one of the oppressors you are defending, not one mask or hamper. For the scion of Forbes Burnham to attempt to engage the Chair of Caricom on her defence of freedom and the civil charter, it is calisthenics in dauntlessness of gold medal proportions that is redolent of LFSB’s the Führer comments:
“We are not a colony, let us settle our internal matter in Guyana. It is our right to say when they may come and when they may not come, I am tired of these busy-bodies”. The Animal Farm comments are well documented and not lost is Guyana 55 years’ history. Today, it is astonishing that the name Burnham would enter a conversation and try to engage Mia Motley on issues such as freedom and democracy. I ask: Is it an epiphany that a Burnham would seek to censure people
interested in safeguarding the will of the people? I say to you, plenipotentiary of the dark era, that neither your class nor popularity is anywhere close to that of Mottley’s and the free world’s, and the Guyanese people will not tolerate the likes of you, who represent the dinosaur mentality. Guyana has freed itself of the economic shackles that we inherited from LFSB. We no longer strap ourselves with sardine, nor do we smuggle flour; we are not seen as the fleeing refugees in the Caribbean.
While it is routine for a daughter not to speak ill of her father, nor a wife of her husband, the new generation, unprejudiced of the Burnham epoch, is watching the daily as Richard Van West-Charles tries to reintroduce smuggling as a national economic activity vis-à-vis his fuel operations. Mrs. Burnham-Van WestCharles, I respect your right to your opinion, but you should also respect the will of the Guyanese people, and be responsible in your ramblings. In case you did not hear, APNU-AFC has lost the
March 2nd 2020 elections by 15,461 votes. The institutions of our state which your father once controlled with iron fist are not as politicised as they once were. Your dad’s fear of the Privy Council seems to be your fear of the CCJ and Caricom. No longer is the PNC paramount, and no one would tolerate a dictator who refuses to adhere to democratic principles. Respectfully, Rovin Adrian
The last refuge of a scoundrel Stop the vile sexist and homophobic comments about Mia Mottley
Dear Editor, Every government, organisation or person that or who has publicly condemned the flagrant, vulgar and incessant attempts by the rigging cabal and their acolytes to perpetrate fraud at the 2nd March 2020 elections held in Guyana and to attempt to defeat the will of the electorate and steal the new Government, has been met with public vitriolic abuse and vilification. The latest victim is the Honourable Mia Mottley QC, Prime Minister of Barbados and Chairperson of Caricom. One of the latest perpetrators is Lincoln Lewis. Lewis’s politics is well known. He has been a rabid and unashamed advocate and supporter of the fraudulent electoral machinations and illicit design of APNU+AFC and the undemocratic agenda clandestinely being executed within the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) from the inception. It dates back to his public support for the unconstitutional appointment of James Patterson as the Chair of GECOM. He has been both consistent and unwavering in his public position on every attempt at electoral chicanery since. He supported the unlawful house-to-house registration exercise. He supported the attempts to remove tens of thou-
sands of registered electors from the National Register of Registrants (NRR) database. He supported Mingo’s fraudulent declarations. He supports Lowenfield’s latest perversity. His position now, therefore, surprises none. The poison that toxicates his mind and which affects his every outlook is well known, but that is for another time. He accuses the Honourable Mottley of making sub-judice comments on the case before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). He chastises her for so doing, citing her Queen’s Counselship. I am not sure how much Mr. Lewis knows about the sub-judice doctrine. I do not pretend to know much about it myself, but I do know that it relates to comments that are made with the intention of, or are likely to, prejudice the outcome of a pending case. I also know that the doctrine must bend and bow to the might of free speech, which is universally guaranteed as a basic human right. The multiple frauds that are attempted in the Guyana electoral process are not only matters of high national importance, but are also matters of regional and universal importance. In a free society, therefore, every citizen has a freedom to express a view on the issue, including one that is crit-
ical and condemnatory. Like Lewis, who publicly supports these fraudulent designs, Ms. Mottley is also a member of a free society, and therefore enjoys that freedom to be critical and condemnatory of the same fraudulent designs. I have listened to Ms. Mottley’s entire speech. Firstly, no reference was made whatsoever to the litigation at the CCJ; and secondly, nothing said in that speech can be interpreted as prejudicing the outcome of those proceedings. No doubt, Ms. Mottley is aware of those legal proceedings. I am also in no doubt that she exercised her mind judiciously, taking into account the sub-judice principle when she spoke. Alas, she is Silk, and I dare say worthy of it. In fact, in her capacity as the Chairperson of Caricom, Ms. Mottley has a duty to make the subject remarks for the following reasons: 1.) Guyana is a member of Caricom, of which she is the current Chair; 2.) Caricom fielded an observer team to the elections. That team certified the elections as free and fair; 3.) upon Mr. David Granger’s initiative, Mottley brokered an accord for a national recount of the ballots to be done. Caricom dispatched a team to oversee the National
Recount exercise; 4.) Mr. Granger cited Caricom as the “most legitimate interlocutor” to observe the elections, and demanded that GECOM take into account the Caricom team’s report; 5.) the Caricom team’s report certified the elections to be fair and credible, and labelled the allegations by APNU+AFC to be false and unsubstantiated. In the circumstances, as a result of Keith Lowenfield’s fraudulent Report, Ms. Mottley could not have remained silent. She was not alone. The Commonwealth and the Ambassadors of the ABC countries and the EU publicly expressed similar sentiments. To the Lewises of Guyana, I say that the overwhelming majority of Guyanese, including objective supporters of the APNU+AFC, welcome these enlightened foreign interventions, and we will continue to encourage them. However, I do appreciate that political demagogues, autocrats, authoritarians and dictators will label them as “interference” and “attacks upon sovereignty” under the rubric of patriotism. After all, “patriotism” has long been the last refuge of a scoundrel. Mohabir Anil Nandlall, Attorney-at-Law
Dear Editor, They aren’t many female Heads of State in the world. It has been heartbreaking as a young lady to read the vile distasteful and disrespectful things supporters of the coalition are saying. The Honourable Mia Amor Mottley became Barbados’s first female Prime Minister, she secured a historic landslide victory and won all seats in their parliament. The glass ceiling was thoroughly shattered. Though I am not surprised by the new narrative of members of the coalition, after all, look at their representation, where are all the women? The women of the coalition have not impressed or inspired me. Why are they silent when their supporters and colleagues are
making their distasteful comments about this inspirational female leader? Where is Sandra Granger? Why is Cathy Hughes suddenly silent? Not only it is disrespectful to women everywhere, but it is also disrespectful to the LGBTQ community. To refer to a female leader as “man” and use male pronouns, clearly is a mockery and is unpalatable. Not only it is rude, but you are also mocking an entire community who are fighting to be recognized, whom only a daily basis gets referred to by all kinds of degrading terms, and have to constantly have to explain the concept of preferred pronouns. STOP with the disrespectful, unpalatable personal attacks! Respectfully, Nutana Singh
