Change Guyana was on Thursday publicly endorsed by two alleged fraudsters, Anthony Snow and Robert Gates during the party’s weekly press conference at the Pegasus Hotel.
Ironically, Thursday’s press conference was focused on crime and security.
Anthony Snow in 2011 formed the Fundamental Support Group to contest the General and Regional Elections that year. He would have been the party’s Presidential Candidate but pulled out of the race on Nominations Day.
At Thursday’s press conference, he said he pulled out of the 2011 race due to corruption at the level of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).
Snow was sentenced to two years in prison in 2014 for causing grievous bodily harm to a customer at his Bagotstown, East Bank Demerara restaurant and has been accused of land fraud and other fraudulent acts in 2016 and 2017.
At the press conference, he made reference to his release from prison on July 9, 2017, the same day the Camp Street Prison was set on fire.
“Just like children who were raised in the ghetto, I had the opportunity to go to the school of hard knocks…I graduated with my Masters here at Camp Street on July 9 of 2017 and we celebrated it with a very big bonfire, I’m sure a lot of you would have saw that on international news and that was during a failed attempt on my life,” Snow said.
On July 9, 2017, prisoners set fire to several sections of the Camp Street prison after which six persons escaped and authorities released 91 persons.
To defend himself, Snow said persons are quick to judge.
He is now a Chef and the Human Resource Director of an organization called Job Fair Worldwide.
In his endorsement, Snow said, “currently Change Guyana is the only party that is actually poised to usher in a long-awaited industrial revolution here in Guyana and that is because we have a businessman at the helm.”
However, moments later, the party’s Presidential Candidate Robert Badal changed his mind about the Snow, admitting to the media that he did not do background checks before putting persons at the podium to speak.
He was informed of Snow’s character by members of the media to which he said “well I apologise for that, I knew nothing about this. It is not our standard to have people who have had previous criminal activity.”
“Had I had known that, I would’ve never accepted it,” he said.
Badal, however, sought to assure that everyone on the party’s candidates’ list will be scrutinized properly.
But while Badal rejected Snow’s endorsement at the end of the press conference, he said nothing of Robert Gates, is also a questionable character.
Gates who said he is the owner of a private investigation firm, Central Advisory Services, spoke out for former prisoners.
“Another factor that contributes to crime is something called recidivism where persons serving time in prison are not given a second opportunity by society, they come out and can’t get jobs and are forced back into crime,” Gates said.
Police in December 2018 issued a wanted bulletin for Gates in connection with an alleged fraud committed on Waheeda Ramcharran on February 2, 2018.
Gates was released from prison in 2014.
In 2008 Alan Robert Gates was placed on $425,000 bail when he appeared before the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court after he allegedly obtained $4.1 million by pretending to be the director of a company.
Meanwhile, Change Guyana was also endorsed by Donald Morrison, a former supervisor at the Guyana Sugar Corporation.
