Dear Editor
I am appalled at the behaviour of the leaders of the “small parties” who instead of displaying political decorum, independence, have openly and unashamedly latched themselves on to the waist of the PPP. These same parties that promised change have not displayed the change they promised their members, supporters and all Guyanese. For readers who are unfamiliar with the phrase shell company, a brief definition follows:
A shell company is: a company that does not itself do or own anything, but is used to hide a person’s or another company’s activities, sometimes illegal ones.
The primary purpose of shell companies is to commit and conceal fraud, although some persons and companies use them for other means such as protecting future assets. This includes concealing the nature, origin, destination of fraudulent assets and finances, and/or concealment of the true owners and decision-makers of a criminal act or conspiracy. In 2014 for example, the famous technology company Hewlett-Packard set up multiple shell companies, a slush fund and several bank accounts to launder money, bribed several officials and used anonymous email accounts and prepaid mobile phones to arrange secret meetings to hand over bag of cash. The U.S. Supreme Court found the company guilty of several accounts of fraud. The company agreed to pay in excess of US$ 100 million in criminal and other penalties to the U.S. Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission.
The so called small parties never intended to compete in these elections. The establishment of each of these parties was encouraged by leading figures in the PPP. These same persons were the architects of the group who organised the “say no” to parking meters protests. This nexus of influential leaders within the PPP/C (persons such as Don Singh, Marcel Gaskin, Kwame McKoy, Rey Hakim, Eddie Boyer, Sasenarie Singh, Victor Singh, Mohammed Raffik and others) and the parking member group, led to the idea to create a lose group of small parties. The purpose of these small parties were to create the impression of dissatisfaction and disappointment with the APNU/AFC Coalition and to pull votes from the Coalition in Region 4. In other words, they were formed to do what happened to the PPP/C when the AFC was formed. That is, most of the votes the AFC received came from voters in PPP/C strongholds. However, the small parties combined could not achieve what the AFC achieved when it first participated in Guyana’s General and Regional Elections in 2006.
There are the reasons these shell parties for the PPP were unsuccessful. These same three reasons are also an insight to their nature as shell companies. First, with the exception of Ralph Ramkarran, the leaders and founders of these parties have zero political experience; after elections they usually disappear off the radar until it’s time for another elections.
In fact, most of these shell parties were registered by mostly business persons whose names never appeared on a list of candidates for any party prior to March 2020. The second reason and characteristic of a shell company is that these shell parties have no infrastructure. In other words, they do not have a steady flow of finances, volunteers, inter-regional and sub district networks and programmes compared to the APNU+AFC Coalition or PPP/C. In other words like shell companies, these parties were set up to be used by the PPP/C in a large scheme to defraud Guyana’s electoral system and our long serving allies, namely the ABCE countries. Thirdly, these shell parties with the exception the URP, OVP and PRP were established approximately two years before the March 2, 2020 elections. Which party with no political experience, no political currency and infrastructure launches its platform to contest was dubbed, “the mother of all elections” so close to an election date?
In closing readers, it is patently clear that these shell parties do not have the capacity to even grow and manage their own party much less the entire country. It is also clear they were formed to pull region 4 votes from the APNU+AFC Coalition while the PPP/C employed their members and agents, mostly in far out areas throughout Guyana’s Hinterland regions, that is the Hinterland, Region 4 and GECOM mostly in Guyana’s Hinterland in the favour of that party.
The icing on the cake was Mercury Public Affairs, the same company the FBI reported was involved in helping Donald Trump collude with Russia to interfere in the 2016 elections in the USA. Mercury’s role was straight forward: (a) shape the PPP/C election campaign and post campaign narrative of rigging without one shred of evidence, (b) facilitate bribes to specific individuals to register shell parties unbeknownst to other leaders and founders of the new shell parties, and worst yet their members and Guyanese who voted for them and (c) negotiate support for the PPP/C in Washington D.C., the CCJ and so forth. For readers who are unaware of what lobbying is, it refers to attempts by private interest groups or individuals to influence the decisions of a Government or Government officials. Lobbying usually involves financial payments as well as exchanging one form of support for another. So if you vote for my party on this issue, I will support your request for a third term Presidency.
Regards
R. Chung-A-On
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_epaper_05_14_2020