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©2019 M&T Bank. Member FDIC. NMLS# 381076. 15610-A 190619 VF
Caribbean L 12 ife, June 28–July 4, 2019 BQ
Guyana’s President, David Granger.
Associated Press / Joedson Alves
ONLY /mo.
By Bert Wilkinson
On a humid, steamy Friday
night of Dec. 21, a Guyanese
government member of
parliament voted with the
opposition in a no confidence
motion to bring down his own
administration, setting in train
a series of events that have left
CARICOM’s largest and most
resource-rich member state in
such political turmoil that no
one knows when the current
crisis will pass.
Charrandass Persaud, an
attorney with dual Canadian
citizenship, denied government
accusations that he took a US$1
million bribe from the main
opposition People’s Progressive
Party (PPP) to give the PPP
the one vote it needed to win
a majority of the 65 seats in
parliament and topple his own
government. He said he voted
with his conscience because
he was fed up with many of the
decisions made by the cabinet
of President David Granger.
Since then, the country has
been in a state of uncharted
political waters that even the
Trinidad-based Caribbean
Court of Justice (CCJ) has been
struggling to sort out. The CCJ
is Guyana’s highest tribunal
and it is the forum to which
both the governing coalition
and the opposition have turned
to sort out what might well be
the worst constitutional crisis
the country has faced in living
memory.
This week, the court gave
both sides additional time to
agree on the name of someone
who is acceptable enough to
be appointed chairperson of
the elections commission.
That person has the casting
vote among the seven person
panel and is widely known to
be the one who could influence
political outcomes one way or
the other.
This is so because the very
same CCJ recently ruled that
Granger had erred when he had
unilaterally appointed retired
judge James Patterson, 86, as
the chair nearly two years ago.
Patterson quit the chair this
week in keeping with the court
ruling that he is ineligible to be
the elections boss.
His departure is politically
significant as the opposition
is fighting to force authorities
to organize fresh elections in
no more than three months
since the government has
been toppled. A commission
operating without a chair means
even more delays and even
more time for a government,
which should already have set
a poll date.
On the other hand, Granger
and his political crew are
demanding a massive pause
in the scheme of things,
contending that the voters list
is so bloated that new house to
house registration is required
to prune it of the dead, the
migrated, those who changed
addresses and to capture all
who turned 18 since the last
registration cycle. This process
could take up to late December,
a development the PPP bitterly
opposes as it verily believes that
the successful no confidence
vote would have triggered
elections since March of this
year.
The result is that the party,
which had fancied its chances of
returning to government after
just one term in opposition
through forced fresh elections,
remains frustrated by the
fact that government has so
far resisted all its efforts to
go to the polls and fears that
the cabinet might successfully
run down the clock and take
elections into next year.
If this is the case, the motion
would have miserably failed as
government would have almost
served out its full five-year term
and be able to present a popular
elections 2020 budget. Its fiveyear
term would not have
been successfully cut short by
Persaud’s deadly dagger of a
vote with the PPP.
So instead of directly
intervening in the country’s
political crisis, the CCJ has
given the two sides until mid
Turmoil in Guyanese politics
Continued on Page 18
/mortgage