See below the full letter from Commissioner of the Guyana Election Commission (GECOM) Clement Rohee
This time, Mr. Vincent Alexander sought to dictate not only how GECOM should conduct its internal staffing arrangements but to deny the Chair’s role in supporting a legitimate recommendation from Vishnu Persaud, GECOM’s CEO to assign acting responsibilities to senior staffers. In others words, based on his January 20, 2023 claim; “GECOM Chair goes it alone …” Alexander wants to run GECOM from whatever limb he may be perched on.
Mr. Alexander consistently fails to make the distinction between policy decisions made at statutory meetings of GECOM and internal administrative matters in relation staff at GECOM’s Secretariat consistent with organization’s constitutional responsibilities.
In his latest criticism leveled against the Chairman of GECOM, Alexander failed to understand that the time is long gone when he and his party can dictate to GECOM what internal actions it may employ to enhance the organization’s effectiveness and efficiency in order to fulfill its constitutional mandate.
In respect to the false flag raised by Alexander, a statement issued by GECOM made it clear that the Chair was in no way ‘creating any new position; nor was any substantive appointment being done to fill a vacant position.
In case he didn’t remember, the statement reminded Mr. Alexander that ‘there is precedence of staff having been seconded, and in one case even appointed, without the knowledge and approval of the Commission.’
Alexander must know about the ‘one case’ referred to in GECOM’s statement. The case in point being, when a much favored Registration Officer was kept at GECOM’s Secretariat unknown to the Commission and was never sent back to the Registration Office. The said individual was appointed to act as GECOM’s Voter Registration Manager (VRM) without the approval of the Commission and was provided with entitlements which the substantive office holder must be the sole beneficiary.
Talk about disingenuousness!
Mr. Alexander seems to believe that only Afro-Guyanese who reflect his party’s political thinking and cohorts, bred in the culture of electoral malpractices should be employed at any level at GECOM much less to be sighted on the premises of any GECOM Registration Centre.
On top of the many indiscretions, it is apposite to recall the unproven allegations Alexander had expressed publicly about Vishnu Persaud who had applied for the job as CEO at GECOM and which Alexander and his ilk had blocked resulting in a court judgement against him.
Alexander, who was the first named Defendant in that case, was ordered by the Court to pay damages in the sum of two million, five hundred thousand dollars ($2,500,000) to the Vishnu Persaud the Claimant, and the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($150,000) as costs to the said Claimant on or before September 30th 2020.
And as though the trail of slander was not enough, mention must be made of Alexander and his comrades’ questionable role in the appointment of Roxanne Myers over Persaud referencing her “superior qualifications and potential to perform” as well their reference to the undisclosed ‘Sandra Jones Report’ and ‘GECOM’s Policy on Employment Practices. Those inaccuracies were brought to light during an investigation by an Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) sub-committee headed by Stanley Moore, Retired Justice of Appeal.
That body had considered it an act of discrimination to appoint Myers over Persaud; ‘There are no institutional rules or practice in GECOM which allows for ethnic discrimination in hiring.’ To buttress this view, the investigation concluded that ‘Mr. Persaud was the first candidate in the history of GECOM who had obtained the highest score and had not been appointed.’
Rubbishing Alexander and company’s claim about qualifications, the investigation further pointed out; ‘Nothing has been presented to us which, at least on paper, reveals any attributes in Ms. Myers that were capable of offsetting the clear paper advantage which Mr. Persaud enjoyed over his rival.’
The same trend continues nowadays at statutory meetings at GECOM where claims of ‘incompetence’, ‘untrustworthiness’ and ‘conspiracies’ are persistently leveled by the opposition trio against the CEO as well as claims of ‘unfairness’ and ‘partiality’ in the decision-making process leveled against the Chairman.
Alexander and his two political siblings operate as though nothing has changed since August 2020. They conveniently overlook the political handlers’ transgressions they had either stoutly defended or remained silent about during the December 2019 to August 2020 constitutional and electoral travails the people of Guyana experienced as a result of the dirty tricks played by those ensconced at Congress Place.
Clement J. Rohee
