Vishnu Persaud, the former Deputy Chief Elections Officer (CEO), scored the highest of those who were interviewed for the job at the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) but was not hired.
Instead, Roxane Myers was chosen for the position.
In July last year, the Ethnic Relations Commissioner (ERC) was asked by three GECOM Commissioners – Bibi Shaddick, Robeson Benn and Sase Gunraj – to investigate employment practices at the elections body because of the hiring of Myers over Persaud.
In the hiring process, they voted in favour of Persaud while the Government Commissioners – Vincent Alexander, Desmond Trotman and Charles Corbin – voted in favour of Myers. The tie-breaker was the Chairman’s vote and he casted his vote with the Government Commissioners.
According to the report compiled by the ERC, when the team met with Justice (rt’d) James Patterson, the Chairman of GECOM on September 06, he claimed that his vote was premised on Mr Persaud being “shifty”.
“The thing with that particular candidate was that he came over to me as shifty and unreliable, that is constant in my mind and I wasn’t going to recommend him in the place of someone who I think was…fit and proper,” Patterson told the ERC investigators, according to the report.
However, when asked how long many times he interacted with Mr. Persaud, the Chairman responded: “I don’t think I even saw him.”
Patterson later suggested that “the paper trail” dictated his views on Mr. Persaud.
The report concluded that Persaud was the first candidate in the history of GECOM who had obtained the highest score and had not been appointed.
