The three lists of candidates submitted by Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo to President David Granger to fill the seat of the Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom) were crafted to force him to make a particular selection, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo and Attorney General Basil Williams SC said on Thursday.
They made the argument during a televised interview on Thursday with the government’s Department of Public Information in response to strong condemnation of Granger’s unilateral decision to name retired judge James Patterson, 84, as the new Gecom Chairman.
Nagamootoo said that if one should carefully analyse Jagdeo’s lists from an unbiased vantage point, they would see not only an 80-year-old nominee in Dr James Rose, who has been aligned to the PPP, on the first of the three lists but a “stacking of the deck” to frustrate Granger into choosing someone Jagdeo is comfortable with and not what is constitutional.
