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The AFC versus Steve Surujbally
Jul 16, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
One of the reasons why I have not joined a political party is because as a matter of chemistry, I put adherence to principles over political strategy.
A political party will ask you to remain silent on a member’s depravity because to speak out would be bad political strategy.
When you hold membership of a political party you have to be careful your dissension does not destroy the party.
For me if a violation runs deep and offends my soul, I will have to speak out. A few persons came up to me and admonished me about a critical letter I wrote on Ramon Gaskin’s position on the City Council.
I was told that the PPP is the enemy and Gaskin is always cussing down the PPP so don’t attack Gaskin.
I didn’t see it that way. A political party may want to court Gaskin because of what he has to offer. I believe Gaskin was not contextual in his condemnation of the City Council. I stand by my response. Gaskin criticized the City Council for being illegal in office and incompetent. But this same Gaskin receives consultancies to study the financial books of the City Council when the financial records of Gaskin’s employers are in a worse state. The PPP government is ten times more incompetent than the City Council which I admit is inept.
In other words, Gaskin was doing solidarity work for the PPP Government and the same Gaskin is a consultant for BK Tiwari who is closely associated with the PPP and who gets the hog of State contracts. When you are a free agent, you are free to criticize people like Gaskin. Political parties may find that if it comes from one of their members it will not be a wise strategy.
Take the case of the AFC and GECOM’s Chairman, Steve Surujbally. My inflexible position on Steve Surujbally is that he is not independent and should not be accepted to continue as the chairman. What David Patterson, the AFC’s General-Secretary, revealed about Surujbally on Thursday evening over Channel 9 should have caused the AFC to issue a statement in 2006 calling for the resignation of Surujbally. The AFC did not. The AFC should now do so.
The AFC has to tell Guyanese if its General-Secretary is lying. If he is not, the AFC has to do what it failed to do for five consecutive years, that is call for the immediate resignation of Steve Surujbally.
We learnt from Patterson (one of the most trusted politicians in Guyana and a person I respect) that after the 2006 poll, GECOM met the AFC.
Among those present were the Chief Elections Officer, Mr. Gocool Boodoo, and the chairman himself. Patterson recalled that GECOM acknowledged that the Linden results carried a mistake in which a seat allocated to Prime Minister Hinds should have gone to the AFC.
The GECOM big boys agreed it would be corrected before the final declaration. Yet the results were announced and Hinds kept his seat and the AFC lost out.
Patterson went on to inform viewers that GECOM felt sorry for what happened and advised that only an election petition to the court could reverse the allocation of the seat. Yet, according to Patterson when the AFC did that, Boodoo presented an affidavit rejecting the AFC’s petition.
In other words if GECOM did not offer a defence, the court had to rule in the AFC’s favour. In other words again, GECOM misled the AFC.
Now here is the AFC’s bombshell. In front of the cameras, Patterson read from a Wikileaks cable and quotes Steve Surujbally as telling the US Ambassador that the AFC’s petition was ridiculous. If Patterson’s portrayal of Steve Surujbally is correct then the AFC agreed to live with Surujbally as the head of GECOM for five years from 2006.
The moral obligation the AFC had was to immediately call for the resignation of the chairman.
It didn’t matter if the PNC was not on board; the AFC had to do what was morally right. With the Patterson revelation, this country must demand an explanation from Surujbally.
My sources tell me that Surujbally’s advisor on political issues is Gerry Gouveia.
This makes sense since on the election night when confusion reigned Surujbally’s house was picketed while he was on his verandah drinking Grey Goose with Gerry Gouveia. Surujbally was annoyed and was quoted in the media as saying that his house was off limits.
Instead of Gerry Gouveia, why doesn’t Surujbally choose Raymond Gaskin as his advisor? Like Jagdeo, Surujbally and Gaskin graduated from Patrice Lumumba University in the now defunct communist empire of the USSR.
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