Round-robin vote cannot overturn decision of in-person meeting of UG council

It is now fifty years since I qualified as a chartered secretary and never during that time have I ever heard of a round-robin meeting whether by a divided or unanimous vote overruling an in-person meeting of the same body. That appears to be happening at the University of Guyana (UG) in respect of the end-of-term leave for 10th Vice-Chancellor Professor Ivelaw Griffith.

My information is that on April 15 of this year, the Council of UG decided that the Vice Chancellor should proceed on his leave from May 13 but that on May 2, he wrote the Pro-Chancellor Major General (ret’d) Joe Singh indicating instead, that he wanted to be paid in lieu of his leave. It should be mentioned that Mr. Singh is in fact carrying out the functions of the Chancellor by virtue of the failure of the Government and the Minister of Education to fill that important vacancy since November last year.

Incredibly, instead of politely informing the Vice Chancellor of the inappropriateness and impermissibility of his request, Mr. Singh proceeded to instruct the Registrar to send out a notice to Council Members re-opening the issue and effectively the reversal of the April 15 decision.

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Five ministers at the CCJ, a waste of taxpayers’ money

Shortly before the Caribbean Court of Justice began hearing the cases yesterday stemming from the no confidence motion of December 21, 2018, the following five members of Cabinet turned up to join the gallery:

Vice-President Sydney Allicock, Minister of Education Nicolette Henry, Minister of Social Cohesion Dr. George Norton, Minister of Public Service Tabitha Sarabo-Halley and Minister of Business Haimraj Rajkumar.

We can only speculate on the basis of the composition of this party, but it is safe to say that none of the persons is in anyway ministerially connected with the cases nor is anyone of them legally trained. Accompanying them was Attorney-at-law Darren Wade, who is not part of the legal team of local and foreign lawyers representing the Government and the Guyana Elections Commission.

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Clarity is needed on that $72.8M payment voucher

There is a payment voucher in circulation purportedly issued by the Ministry of Legal Affairs in favour of Dr. Francis Raphael Alexis for $72.8 million. Dr. Alexis has been retained by Attorney General Basil Williams to argue the appeal in two of the Confidence cases before the Court of Appeal.

I have no reason to ascertain the authenticity of the payment voucher and have some doubt that even Basil Williams would pay such an exorbitant sum in one of the most frivolous appeals before our courts for decades. For now, I am prepared to give the benefit of an explanation to Mr. Williams but ask that he respond to the following questions

1. Is the purported payment voucher authentic and a payment of $72.8 million was made?
2. Is this a final payment, and if not what is the total sum to be paid to Dr. Alexis?
3. What is the scope of Dr. Alexis’ retainer?
4. From which line item is the sum of $72.8 million and any other sum to be paid?
5. At which level of the Government was the decision made to recruit Dr. Alexis and what was the sum approved?

I thank him for his prompt response.

We are faced now with a regime created not out of fraudulent elections but one which is illegal and unconstitutional

The one month extension to the constitutional timeframe for the holding of the 2006 elections has been the subject of much debate and I hope that it is now clear to all that the extension was made in accordance with the Constitution, the Representation of the People Act and the Election Laws (Amendment) Act. Another election to which reference is often made to prove that the results were infected by fraud was in respect of 1997. That election was the subject of an election petition case, known as the Esther Perreira case, and featuring some of the top lawyers of the day including Rex McKay, Keith Massiah, Miles Fitzpatrick, Doodnauth Singh and Ralph Ramkarran. It is important that any distortion or allegation of fraud is addressed by reference to the facts and perhaps helpful for all of us to reflect on other instances in which real electoral fraud took place.   

We recall that following street protests led by the PNCR, CARICOM stepped in and as part of the fact-finding process, Cross J. undertook a painstaking audit of the counts of the votes of the general and regional elections. The Commission found no evidence of fraud.

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GECOM’s requirement of a minimum period of 148 days to hold elections is an admission of its incompetence

The purpose of this letter is to give a factual summary of the compliance or otherwise with the calling and holding of elections under the Constitution between 1997 and 2015. But before I do so, I have to express some sorrow for Yolanda Ward, Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Guyana Elections Commission, who in responding to a letter by a former Deputy Chief Election Officer, showed how much she has eaten her own words and has become part of the incompetence, duplicity and subservience of GECOM under James Patterson, the unconstitutionally imposed Chairman of a perennially divided GECOM.

I set out a history of the critical dates of those elections from information sourced from the records of the National Assembly below. 

(E) represents the number of days between the dissolution of Parliament and the date of elections.

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