BANKS DIH Procurement and Operations Executive David Carto, was yesterday voted in as President of the Georgetown Amateur Basketball Association (GABA).
The association held its long awaited Annual General Meeting (AGM) at the National Gymnasium where Carto gained a landslide win over former President Trevor Rose. Twelve of the 14 affiliated clubs were on hand at the meeting which was chaired by Guyana’s first FIBA referee Cecil Chin and nine of them were in favour of Carto, while only one opted for Rose to return to the throne in which he sat on for the past years.

Carto will have former junior national player Kester Gomes as his deputy, who picked up eight of 12 votes, beating former female national standout Merle Chalmers and Kelvin Simone who also served on the previous association.

Chalmers, however, was named assistant secretary treasurer after winning seven votes ahead of Colours Boutique Panthers player Yannick December and Ravens forward Seriah Clarke.

Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Major Kenlloyd Roberts ran unopposed for the post of Secretary while Scotia Bank Guyana Manager Vibert Jones, too, had no opposition for his seating as Treasurer.

Prior to the elections, the clubs and the previous association shared many differences on if the AGM should be held giving the nonexistence of the Treasurers report.
Roger Duff served as Treasurer for the Trevor Rose led GABA and it is said that millions of dollars passed through the association during his ruling.

Rose, a fashion designer by profession, was mooting for the clubs to form an interim committee in the absence of Duff’s report and call the AGM upon its completion but the frustrated clubs argued that there was no proper reason why the report could not have been done, given the prolonged time frame the then treasurer had.

Chin, being the chairman and a pioneer of the game in Guyana, concurred that Duff would have had sufficient time to make his report available.
As such, Chin said that the clubs were in their democratic and constitutional rights to move forward without the treasurer’s report and put the incoming association in a mandatory position to get the GABA books in order.

In the initial stages, Rose along with the then Secretary Robert ‘Bobby’ Cadogan were both reluctant to provide their respective reports of the game during their tenure in power with the view that the most important part of the AGM was missing.

However, after much ruckus and deliberation between the Rose administration and the represented clubs, it was moved through the chairman of the meeting (Chin) that the elections go on as promised.

In their report, both Rose and Cadogan dwelt on their ‘Burnham Basketball Court Enhancement Project’ as their prized accomplishment, which was in its first phase of completion (lights and players area redone).

Its second phase Rose noted is already in process with the arrival of the two new backboards and he also promised to work in cohesion with Carto’s administration in seeing the project go on as planned.

Meanwhile, Carto in making his first address to the clubs as GABA’s President,  said that before anything could be done by his administration, he would as soon as possible, be looking to work with Rose on handing over all documents and other items which would have been in their position.

He went on to state that, “we will be meeting as an executive first to iron out what is a major aspect of our running, and that is the treasurer’s report,  then we will  meet with the clubs to plan a way forward for the sport.”

New executive elected :  President – David Carto, Vice President – Kester Gomes, Secretary – Kenlloyd Roberts,
Assistant Sec. Treas. – Merle Chalmers, Treasurer – Vibert Jones