Latest update March 28th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 07, 2009 News
Local Govt. Elections Delay
…says public displays of disappointment by President planned
Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Dr Steve Surujbally in an internal memorandum that was seen by this newspaper, informed his Commissioners along with the Chief Elections Officer that President Bharrat Jagdeo has been making false statements as it relates to the delay in Local Government Elections (LGE).
According to Dr Surujbally, the entire Commission and Chief Election Officer, at a meeting with Dr. Roger Luncheon in July this year, were informed that the “Blame Game” would begin, especially with the hurling of aspersions against him.
Dr Surujbally pointed out that, “This shocking piece of information was given before GECOM made any release relative to the few months postponement of the LGE…It is clear that the public displays of disappointment and the concomitant abuse were planned…One must ask oneself why.”
Surujbally also pointed out that the President might be further disappointed if the GECOM Secretariat’s work, including current preparation for the LGE comes to a halt, because rent has not been paid and the staff finds itself without an Office and out on the streets (as has happened recently).
“The Government has in fact released money for the LGE preparations…The question that needs to be asked is whether those allocations were enough, and whether the releases were timely.”
According to Dr Surujbally, the commissioners must be reminded that neither the Chairman nor any of them (Commissioners) are the legal custodian or manager of GECOM’s finances nor is any of its Accounting Offices.
“If one tells an untruth often enough, there is a tendency for the story to acquire the mantle of veracity…Many persons in history have delivered rhetoric passionately, knowing fully well that the content of the speech is in the realm of cliché.”
Dr. Surujbally posited that every person tends to heighten his or her own reality.
“One starts with a private fantasy which may evolve into an unsubstantiated anecdote…However, once the non-fact is repeated often enough, it transmogrifies itself into an absolute truth.”
Within this context, according to Dr Surujbally, the President at a recent news conference and later at the opening of the GAWU Congress, exhibited his true genius by, “metamorphosing and elevating pseudo-facts into definitive statements, using the sheer force of facial gymnastics and dramatic performance to embellish false points…These incorrect statements are spreading like a wildfire and the flames are being fanned by the media.”
He noted that it is not at all provable that Guyana’s elections are “the second most expensive in the world…what is the source of such an outrageous statement…Such exaggerations serve only to evoke sentiments ranging from tut-tutting to hypocritical shock, especially from the non-knowledgeable and those who love to wallow in Schadenfreude.”
According to Dr Surujbally, the President’s, “utterances on this matter are really nothing but flights of fantasy, a figment of someone’s imagination and an excursion into untruth…More importantly, relative to the costs of elections in Guyana, is the question why do we spend as much money as we do…Does GECOM ask for Scrutineers to look over its officers’ shoulders? Was the scrutineering activity necessary? Or was the $300,000,000 tab, ostensibly associated with the payment of scrutineers of the PPP and the PNC, having another motive as its point of origin?”
Dr Surujbally also questioned who asked for millions to be spent on a Fingerprint Cross Matching (FCM) exercise, pointing out that it was not GECOM.
He noted that there is no historical culture of multiple or double registration in Guyana.
“The FCM figures from both 2006 .and 2009 have shown that very few persons doubly registered with willful wickedness aforethought…We expend money on new ballot boxes while previously used boxes become mildewed in locked containers…We are forced to purchase the more expensive transparent ballot boxes because politicians prefer these, although the new ballot boxes provide no improved functionality.”
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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