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The Roxanne Myers I knew

Jun 20, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – I was left with my mouth wide open when through live-streaming I saw what Roxanne Myers was doing in the GECOM command centre in the Ashmin building. This couldn’t be the person whose academic career I assisted in expanding.
Myers was one of my favourite students. I saw potential in her. After her graduation, I selected her to be one of my teaching assistants in the philosophy course I taught at the time. There was an opening for a junior lecturer in my department and I asked my colleagues to consider her. After that, she never looked back. I hope she remembers the brilliant works of those great philosophers.
My removal from UG severed my relation with Myers. I never saw her since December 2011 but did once meet up with her at the funeral service of Dr. Mark Kirton’s mother-in-law. I heard that she went to Costa Rica and did a one year stint in peace studies.
From chatting with her when she was my student, I developed an interest in her because of what she told me of her multi-racial background. She described the kind of people she hung out with and the kind of music she liked. I would say here and now, I believe her socialisation history was what made me wanted to see her move up the academic ladder. I strongly embrace the gospel that this country needs as a matter of exigency to assist young multi-racial mentalities to develop.
I had no idea that of where she was or what she was doing until I heard of the controversy that canopied her presence as the Deputy Chief Elections Officer (DCEO) of GECOM. Of course she didn’t give herself the job. The three GECOM commissioners from the PNC and the then chairman, Justice Patterson, facilitated her over the more experienced and qualified, Vishnu Persaud, the then DCEO.
Up to this moment, I cannot believe that the Roxanne Myers I liked as a student and that has an education in peace studies is the person I saw on countless videos behaving in an unacceptable manner in the 2020 March election that was being live-streamed to the world.
For five months, I wrote on the election drama (and I don’t know if readers noticed), whenever I touched on what happened to Assistant Commissioner, Edgar Thomas, I never mentioned Myers’ name. My feeling is that it would give her an opportunity to sue. I was proven right. Myers is filing libel writs left, right and center.
Was it Myers that ordered Thomas to remove GECOM Commissioner, Sase Gunraj, from the command centre (she is a GECOM employee while Gunraj is towering above her in authority in GECOM)? In their submission to GECOM asking that the triumvirate – Myers, Lowenfield and Mingo – be dismissed, the PPP commissioners have named Myers as the person who wanted to have Gunraj put out. When Thomas insisted that Gunraj has the jurisdictional authority to be in the command centre, he, Thomas, was himself removed by his seniors.
Myers couldn’t sue me because nowhere in print did I ever finger her as the person that ordered Mr. Gunraj to leave. Myers may sue the PPP commissioners for libel for stating that she is the person that asked that the PPP’s GECOM commissioner be expelled from the centre.
A lawyer like Sanjeev Datadin is going to make mincemeat of Myers. First, he is going to summon the three commissioners and other officials that were present and produce video clips. His trump card will be Edgar Thomas. If Thomas says that Myers approached him to have Gunraj removed then her libel writ dissolves and she will have to pay humongous cost.
I cannot comment on the charges before the courts that the triumvirate is facing but I am within the dictates of natural law to offer my opinion on what sentences should be harsh for what crimes people commit all over the world. I deeply believe that fraud committed by elections officials come close to treason. Tampering with a national election in any country is a formidable criminal act. I cannot see on conviction how a court can spare the accused a jail term.
Since Myers is fond of suing, I am yet to see a libel writ against the chairman of the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC). It was through the ERC’s chairman that the country learnt that the then Deputy Chief Elections Officer (DCEO), Vishnu Persaud, was more eligible to remain as DCEO than Myers. I guess with all the criminal charges against her and all the libel writs she is filing Ms. Myers is going to be very familiar with the steps, the buildings and the ambience of the courts.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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