– Edghill
CHAIRMAN of the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) Bishop Juan Edghill yesterday expressed dissatisfaction over the fact that many complaints to the ERC are being sensationalised before being dealt with properly by the constitutional body.

He told a press conference, at ERC’s Peter Rose Street, Queenstown, Georgetown offices, that some complainants have also been refusing to provide follow-up information and unwilling to comply with the procedures involved in dealing with their matters.

Edghill referred specifically to the ‘Monkey Mountain issue’ involving Information Liaison to the President, Mr. Kwame McCoy and columnist Mr. Freddie Kissoon.

Edghill said it is important to note that the controversy surrounding the two was in the public domain even before it reached the ERC and he lamented that neither McCoy nor Kissoon have responded to requests by investigators to follow through with the process by signing forms, giving more information and making themselves available for interviews.

According to Edghill, Kissoon told the ERC investigators he has no interest in proceeding if McCoy was not going to do so.

Edghill said Kissoon’s cooperation is dependent on whether or not McCoy was pursuing the issue and that was the response from the former when he was asked by investigators to visit the office and sign a complaint form.

He said Kissoon has been telling the ERC investigators one story while writing a totally different one in a newspaper.

“I am sure you will hear a different story if we (ERC) do not follow up with the complaint,” Edghill said.

“Is Mr. Freddie Kissoon using the ERC to make the news or to sensationalise a matter or is he being responsible when he writes asking us to investigate a complaint?”, the Chairman enquired.

Edghill said, based on the feedback he received from the investigators, McCoy had difficulty finding the address of the ERC.

“The ERC is nobody’s football that you can use for your own sensationalising or for political mileage. I take this opportunity to make it clear that we (ERC) will not pick up anybody’s fire rage or fight anybody’s personal agenda,” he declared.

Edghill added: “This is a responsible constitutional commission and both of them (McCoy and Kissoon) must know that, unless they are prepared to follow the complaints procedure, the ERC will not be continuing with this matter.”

Edghill said McCoy and Kissoon never meant for the matter to be seriously investigated but lodged the complaint solely on the basis on sensation.

Edghill mentioned a letter that was recently penned by Mayor Hamilton Green who, he claimed, “jumped into the fray” of sensationalising the matter with McCoy and Kissoon by writing to a newspaper.

Saying Green’s correspondence was uncalled for, Edghill said the Mayor, being a former Prime Minister and one of the country’s elders, should be contributing towards development and ethnic security rather than driving groups apart.

Edghill charged that Green’s letter made matters worse than what they were when the complaint was lodged with the ERC.

“Anybody who looked at Green’s letter would conclude that, while he was trying to be nice and decent with the pen, the intent was to make the matter worse,” Edghill stated.

He remarked that people are hurt when public officials and professional writers behave in this manner.

“Your writings affect simple, ordinary people and we should be working for the development of Guyana and not for its destruction,” Edghill advised.