Dear Editor
DURING September 2016, without interviews from Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, Glenn Lall and the Kaieteur News published allegations of fraud implicating the CEO and several senior staff of GECOM. Deodat Sharma and his staff from the Audit Office of Guyana immediately launched a forensic audit into those allegations.

The following month, the Guyana Chronicle published several articles on Vishnu Persaud, GECOM’s deputy chief election officer’s alleged involvement in fraudulent activities with advertising firm TroyTec, but unlike the Kaieteur News and Glenn Lall’s assault on Keith Lowenfield, where the auditor general and his staff started hunting GECOM’s CEO. Mr. Sharma has been very silent on the Guyana Chronicle’s stories on Vishnu Persaud.

Its approaching one year since the Guyana Chronicle highlighted the allegations against Mr. Persaud with TroyTec. Why was Vishnu Persaud signing contracts and documents as deputy chief election officer and public relations officer? Did he have the blessings of the Commission? Or was he usurping the functions of the substantive PRO at the time, Mr. Richard Francois?

Mr. Sharma, it would seem that the audit on Mr. Lowenfield left you and your team out of breath. Or are you being advised to target only certain people. This is the second GECOM senior official to which the Audit Office seems to be turning a blind eye — Gocool Boodhoo was the first. I will leave you with Edgar Allan Poe, poet from that Donald Pleasance and Charles Bronson hit movie, ‘Telefon’; “The woods are dark, lonely and deep and you have miles to go before you sleep.”

Regards
Former GECOM employee