More than three weeks have passed since Gecom wrote The New Movement’s former executive member Dr Gerald Forde, that it was having a second look at the question of who is the bona fide Representative of TNM’s List. Since then, however, there has been no further communication on the subject. The matter has been a source of some controversy, since the List Representative is the one authorised to decide on who should occupy the TNM Parliamentary seat, held as part of a joinder arrangement with the LJP and ANUG. At the moment Dr Asha Kissoon has anchored herself securely on the opposition benches and refuses to budge. This is despite the fact that under what used to be known in less gender-sensitive times as a gentleman’s agreement, she was required to surrender the seat to ANUG months ago.
The case of The New Movement is the story of Guyana’s politics writ small. TNM came to prominence during the five months’ election crisis, and although advertised as a party of professionals, was widely seen by the electorate as a doctors’ party. Under the agreement with ANUG and the LJP, it would have occupied the joinder seat for 80 days, because it only received 244 votes, while the other two parties had over 2,200 votes each. Even by Guyana standards its constituency is minuscule.
The LJP has already completed its stint, its leader, Mr Lenox Shuman, having vacated the seat since March last year. Dr Kissoon, his successor, was expected to have relinquished the seat in November, but failed to do so. Subsequently, under pressure, she gave a verbal undertaking to ANUG that she would leave at the end of February this year. But she is still very much in situ.
After the PPP/C acceded to office in August 2020, the little party came under considerable stress ending in the resignation last November of six of its executive members. Critically in the light of current events, these included its prime ministerial candidate and Representative of the List Gerald Forde and Party Secretary and Deputy Representative of the List Josh Kanhai. Writing to the party at the time Dr Forde referred to its ineptitude which, he said, was largely owing to “faction formation, character (assassination) within the leadership of the movement [and the application of] undemocratic principles by Dr. [Asha] Kissoon and [Turhane] Doerga.”
Mr Doerga, the party’s financier, and Dr Kissoon, it was claimed, had mixed private interests with national politics because the former had created an oil and gas company called GuyEnergy and the latter had been made a director of it. It was not a contention which Dr Kissoon had any intention of entertaining, and she promptly countered with the accusation that Dr Forde was “bitter that he was not invited to be a part of GuyEnergy”, and that the company was a completely separate entity from TNM. The issues, she went on, were the normal ones faced by any political party, adding waspishly, “if he can’t handle these internal issues then he can’t lead a country.”
For his part Dr Kanhai told this newspaper that the executive had voted to suspend the presidential candidate – i.e. Dr Kissoon – from the party, but had found themselves facing suspension after she and Mr Doerga took control. An unnamed member elaborated on this by explaining that Mr Doerga had “used his position as financier and trustee to take control and threatened litigation, so we walked away.”
A major problem between the presidential candidate and the executive was reported to have been the attempts to “besmirch” the character of members, which were described as too ‘malicious to countenance.’ Dr Kissoon had been accused of trying to follow a course of divide and rule by relaying untruths about some members to others. Furthermore, we reported that Dr Forde had claimed some leaders of TNM had aligned too closely to the PPP/C since the election, thereby corrupting the internal politics of the party.
After the case of Dr Kissoon’s obduracy was given public exposure, Dr Forde wrote Gecom on March 5th this year asking for an investigation into how her name had been submitted to Parliament in the first place, and seeking to have her recalled to allow for the ANUG representative to take the seat. He explained that both he and the Deputy List Repre-sentative, Dr Kanhai, had resigned from the party, but he did not recall writing Gecom to have his name removed as Representative of the List, and Dr Kanhai had also not done so in relation to his capacity as Deputy.
He had now learnt, he said, that someone else had been named the Representative of the List, and it was this which had made possible Dr Kissoon’s entry to Parliament. He expressed his concern that Part IX Section 98 of the Representation of the People Act had not been followed, since the Chief Election Officer had not ascertained his unwillingness or inability to execute the function of allocating a candidate to the National Assembly. Similarly in the case of Dr Kanhai.
It was a question of whether Gecom had done its due diligence in establishing the true identity of TNM’s Representative of the List, he wrote. And if, following an investigation it was found that he was still the Representative of the List, he wanted Dr Kissoon recalled so that ANUG’s Althia King could assume the Parliamentary seat. Dr Forde also wrote the Speaker of the House.
Following his March 5th letter, Dr Forde received a reply from Gecom’s Chair, retired Justice Claudette Singh, dated March 18th, in which she said he had no standing in the issue. Gecom, she said, was in receipt of correspondence from the party on November 16th, 2020, stating that Dr Forde was no longer an executive member and as a consequence a new Representative of the List and a Deputy had been elected. “In view of the foregoing, please be advised that Section 99A of the Representation of the People Act, Cap 1:03 stipulates the procedure for filling of vacancies in the National Assembly and GECOM has fulfilled its obligation to the process in accordance with the law,” she wrote.
So we are now at the stage where Gecom is taking another look at the TNM dispute. As we reported, Dr Forde received another letter from Justice Singh rescinding her previous missive and saying that the Commission had some concerns to consider and that she would inform him “expeditiously” about the findings. While nothing was stated in the letter about what those concerns were, this newspaper understands from sources that there is no record of the 2020 letter stating that Dr Forde was no longer a member of the party.
Whether the legal claims of Dr Forde himself are correct or incorrect, it must be a source of disquiet for the Commission that it can find no letter on file officially indicating that Drs Forde and Kanhai were no longer members of the TNM. Either the letter has been lost, which would say nothing for Gecom’s filing system, or they never received one in the first place, and were just relying on verbal communications which they did not subsequently try and confirm. If so, that would bespeak an indefensible level of casualness, which does not enhance the reputation of the Commission, more especially given the nature of its responsibilities.
Be that as it may, the sooner Gecom responds in this matter, the better. In the meantime, Dr Kissoon is thumbing her nose at democracy while she behaves like a squatter in the nation’s legislature. The government is not helping matters by leaving her in the post of Deputy Speaker either, but then they don’t want it to go to an ANUG representative, let alone a member of the main opposition. So much for their commitment to democratic practice.
When Dr Kissoon took up her seat in Parliament last year she said that she would use it to lobby for constitutional reform and transparency in public office. “Transparency, I think, is something really lacking right now,” she was quoted as saying; “what I can assure the public [is that] anything that is brought to our attention will be shared with the Guyanese people…”
She must have forgotten all about that, because this newspaper has so far failed to persuade her to explain to the public why she has resiled from an agreement supposedly made in good faith. It seems that Dr Asha Kissoon can now add hypocrisy to her CV which already lists an anti-democratic stance and dishonourable conduct.