Businessman Bissoondyal Singh unanimously elected DCB President

Businessman Bissoondyal Singh was on Friday unanimously elected President of the Demerara Cricket Board (DCB) at a Court-supervised elections process at the Demerara Cricket Club, Queenstown, Georgetown.

Five Associations were due to vote at the elections, which was mandated by the High Court following a ruling on Monday last, but only three were represented during the process, which lasted a mere 15 minutes.

Seventeen (17) delegates from the Georgetown Cricket Association (seven), the East Coast Cricket Board (seven) and the Upper Demerara Cricket Association (three) were present, while the West Demerara Cricket Association and the East Bank Cricket Association were absent.

There were two agenda items- the Call to Order by a Marshal of the High Court of the Supreme Court of Judicature and the nomination and election of a Returning Officer for the conduct of the elections.

Major General (Ret’d) Norman McLean was the Returning Officer, having been nominated by former DCB President Claude Raphael and seconded by current Georgetown Cricket Association President Neil Barry.

Singh, the current President of the East Coast Cricket Board, was nominated to head the DCB by Vice-president of the Georgetown Cricket Association Roger Harper and it was seconded by the other Vice-president of the Georgetown Cricket Association, Azad Ibrahim.

“Today is the dawn of a new era, and democracy has returned to Demerara cricket for good,” Singh said moments after being elected.

“We intend to have this process- the electoral process- at the Demerara Cricket Board to be transparent and democratic as possible. From now on, no media would be locked out. Every single thing concerning the management of the Demerara Board, as well as the selection of our team and the cricket development of the Demerara Board would be made public.”

Harper and President of the Upper Demerara Cricket Association Bradley Fredericks were elected Vice-presidents, while Ibrahim was elected Treasurer and Pretipaul Jaigobin Assistant Treasurer.

Davteerth Anandjit and Ronald Williams are Secretary and Assistant Secretary respectively; Barry is the Marketing Manager and Raymond Barton Chairman of the Competitions Committee.

Raphael has been elected to serve as Public Relations Officer, while the Trustees are Troy Khan and Fazal Ishak.

The Full Court on Wednesday last unanimously dismissed an Appeal by Secretary of the Guyana Cricket Board, Anand Sanasie, to stop the Demerara Cricket Board (DCB) elections, slated for Friday (February 19).

The matter was heard by Full Court Judges, Justice Nareshwar Harnanan and Justice Fidela Corbin-Lincoln.

Moments after the Appeal was thrown out on Wednesday, Attorney Arudranauth Goosai, representing three affiliates of the DCB that were present at the elections, told News Room Sport: “We presented out arguments and they treated the arguments for the application for the stay as the arguments for the substantive appeal, and they unanimously dismissed the appeal and they refused the stay. That means the Demerara Cricket Board (elections) will proceed on Friday as per the order of Justice (Navindra) Singh. They agreed that Justice Singh had jurisdiction to make the Order which he made, which is to fix the elections for Friday.”

Attorney Gossai added: “Also the Court ruled that the elections they had in January 2020 is of no effect to the elections that Justice Singh ordered, and in any event, once the Act was back in force election of those officers would have come to an end.”