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The trickery behind the three lists
Dear Editor,
The Alliance for Change has already endorsed President David Granger’s decision to appoint retired Justice James Patterson to be the new Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission.
The Party has also condemned the wild, inflammatory and indecorous statements made by Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo and the People’s Progressive Party’s anti-nationalist plan to sabotage the country through non-cooperation.
One thing should be made clear here. When President David Granger rejected the three lists of six names of nominees submitted by the Leader of the Opposition, he acted within his constitutional powers. But even more than that, he rejected the Jagdeo’s sinister political and racial overtures.
When Jagdeo was accused of being an ideological racist, he hypocritically ran to the court for protection from slander. However, when we look at the composition of the lists of nominees that he proffered, it is clear what his intentions were. Of the first list, only Christopher Ram could be singled out as not having close ties to the PPP.
The point here is not which ethnicity should sit as GECOM Chair. Rather, it is about Jagdeo’s obsession and compulsion with reducing everything to racist categories. So in his willful simplicity, he attempted to get President Granger to choose Christopher Ram who is now offended because the President did not find him “fit and proper” and who by his own action now suggests that he is “unsuitable”.
The second of Jagdeo’s intention was to get the president to appoint someone who was sympathetic to the PPP. The only person of African descent on that list was Professor James Rose who once appeared on PPP list of candidates.
If President Granger went for race Jagdeo would have gotten his wish. Jagdeo has not got accustomed to the fact that the country has rejected him and the PPP. He is so possessed of “control freakism” that he still behaves as if he pulls the strings. Hiding behind the Carter formula, he deliberately and deceptively served up flawed lists with the aim of tricking the President into appointing someone who would be racially and ideationally disposed to the PPP.
Jagdeo’s third intention was purely political. This was to put the President in a position where he would reject all the lists. The PPP are well schooled in opposition politics. As a result, they had hoped to use the rejection of the lists to inflict blows on President Granger for stalling the electoral process.
Had he had his own way, he would not have sent the third list. But his hands were tied. He did not want to carry the blame for stalling the process. He therefore sent a list with a former GECOM Chair and padded around him some persons whom he knew were “unsuitable” to the President.
Still pursuing the aim of having a supporter selected, he thought that he had the president checkmate. He was wrong.
It would now seem that the President had made up his mind, after seeing the first list, that he would have none of Jagdeo’s deception. The choice of the learned Judge could not be willy-nilly. It seems to have been carefully thought out and executed. Jagdeo got what he deserved and the nation should see his intentions for what they truly are.
He never had the national interest at heart. His intention was just to sabotage the electoral process and to disrupt the political climate.
It is a dreadful thing to fall in the hands of Karma. Jagdeo and his PPP cabal sat for fifteen years hiding behind a constitution that the PPP demonstrated and agitated against since 1980.
They quarreled with powers of the presidency in the Constitution. They knew that the Constitution made the President the final arbiter of who is “fit and proper” to be selected for the GECOM Chair.
They knew also, that the nominees who were offered by the Leader of Opposition had to be found “suitable” by the President. This meant that the President was never obligated to select from the list. In fact, it was the PPP who, sticking slavishly to the Carter formula, used their two-thirds majority in 1995 to amend the Constitution and inserted the “fit and proper” in Article 161.
Jagdeo should stop his hypocrisy and his infantile whining. He got a “fit and proper reward” for his chicanery.
Dillon Goring
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