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Samantha Fedee and Ida Sealy-Adams are victims of political overreach

The instances of the removal of Ms. Samantha Fedee and Mrs. Ida Sealey-Adams from their respective positions in the service of the state are among the more recent examples of the insidious recriminatory practices embedded in the exercise of political power in Guyana. The practice is as crass as it is vulgar. It is characterized by a kind of do dem back theatre that has become a fixture in our political culture. It allows those who wield power at one time or another to play monopoly with people’s lives, pressing their control of the state into service to perpetuate their vindictive ways.  The practice is connected, as well, to an obligation by those with the perks of the state machinery in their hands to use and abuse these as they see fit. It positions them, first, to dispossess those who are not pleasing in their sight, on the one hand, and on the other, to reward their own faithful.

Currently, we are witnessing the process of two senior women public servants taking the fall.

No official reason has been given for Mrs. Sealy-Adams’ removal from her position as General Manager of the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC). We strongly believe that none exists. There has been no accusation of incompetence or wrongdoing. We challenge the political administration to say otherwise.  This newspaper is aware of the GMC’s role, under the leadership of Mrs. Sealy-Adams in aggressively supporting the rise of businesses in the small and medium scale agricultural and agro processing sectors. We have found her to be nothing but diligent in this pursuit…whether in persistently pushing its role in local product promotion through the facility of The Guyana Shop, probing the possibilities for the expansion of overseas markets for local farm produce and agro processed products,  staging Farmers’ Markets through which small farmers and agro-processors could broaden the base of the local market for their goods, overseeing various types of training programmes for small business operators and continually expanding the role of the Guyana Shop in incrementally promoting goods produced by interior communities. The Sophia Pack House, which falls under the jurisdiction of the GMC has been constantly available and ready to facilitate the movement of farm exports to markets abroad.

Local agro processers close to the GMC say that Ida Sealey-Adams’ role in working with agro processors to significantly improve local packaging and labeling standards in the sector is among   her more noteworthy accomplishments as General Manager of the GMC. This, bearing in mind the fact that packaging and labeling had, hitherto, been the primary stumbling block to the national effort to improve our export market. When, last week, the Ministry of Agricul-ture announced the appointment of Teshwana Lall as General Manager of the GMC it did not even show the decency to dwell on the changed circumstances of her predecessor.

We know less about the work of Permanent Secretary Fedee though we have no reason to believe that her rise through the ranks of the Public Service has not been merited.  As in the instance of Mrs. Sealy-Adams we have been afforded no official reason for her removal. Parliamentary Affairs and Governance Minister, Gail Teixeira, while asserting that it is the President’s sole and unchallengeable right to remove a Permanent Secretary from office, makes no mention of whether or not good cause or reason is attached to that prerogative. Frankly, Minister Teixeira’s attempt to ‘explain’ Permanent Secretary Fedee’s removal from her position is one of those ‘pull-the-other-leg’ tall tales that would have been side-splitting had it not been tendered in the process of what is, in fact, the derailment of Ms. Fedee’s public service career.

Both Ms. Fedee and Mrs. Sealy-Adams are victims of that familiar post-elections political liberty customarily usurped by the new office holders. Few other forms of power-driven political indulgence are either more loathsome or more counterproductive.  Indeed, the circumstances of these two women who would have made sacrifices to eventually secure respected positions in the state sector are a manifestation of the political cesspool in which we live and which, like in the instances addressed in this editorial, periodically belches forth an unbearable putridity.

The cases of Ms. Fedee and Mrs. Sealey-Adams are but two examples of their kind that have dotted Guyana’s post-independence political landscape. What is, in truth, a downright abhorrent practice continually gives the lie to the litany of high-sounding political pronouncements about a commitment to ‘the democratic process’ and governing in the interest of all the people, mouthed with monotonous regularity by our rulers. Everything has always been about the pre-eminence of the holders of power.

Distressingly, long prior to the March general elections and the eventual outcome the storm clouds had begun to gather. ‘Threats’ of recrimination had begun to float around like balloons at a fairground…so that the eventual outcome of the elections appears to be bringing with it the fulfillment of long-uttered threats. Here are two instances that cut sharply across undertakings given at the hustings about a democratic governance process. These, it turns out, were no more than sanctimonious cant.

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Far RamaCANT.....this was the same point I was making about Vincent Adams.

Your PPP is on a roll and it will come back to haunt them...there is no reason for them to weed out all the PNC (AFROS) from government.

V

I saw this coming.  The only political party I have ever been associated with in Guyana is the PPP and I know their modus operandi.  I saw this kind of thing coming (together with corruption, murder etc.) and that is why I wanted the Coalition to continue in office.  It was consequentialist decision making and morally justified.  In any case , stay tuned, Guyana under the current PPP is headed for disaster.   

T

If those people are incompetent by all means replace them with better stock but it seems they are removing competent people and replacing them with those who love wearing red t shirts.

cain
@cain posted:

If those people are incompetent by all means replace them with better stock but it seems they are removing competent people and replacing them with those who love wearing red t shirts.

This the norm with most in the PPP.  They are given payback government jobs due to their participation in election campaigns and not their qualification. Even those with little qualification gets corrupt easily, when they see others doing the same. 

The PPP toned their corrupt re-election plans well, since  their corrupt days of the 1960s. Unfortunately, their corrupt ways today will continue to let down their ignorant voters. Whose lifestyle will not change much, while the  PPP government elite gets rich.   

Tola

Are they really weeding out all PNC Afros from government?  Let's not make wild and unsubstantiated statements without ascertaining the facts.

No. But the perception among Afros is that they are being weeded out. They feel tis government does not represent them...that is ll that matters.

V
@Totaram posted:

I saw this coming.  The only political party I have ever been associated with in Guyana is the PPP and I know their modus operandi.  I saw this kind of thing coming (together with corruption, murder etc.) and that is why I wanted the Coalition to continue in office.  It was consequentialist decision making and morally justified.  In any case , stay tuned, Guyana under the current PPP is headed for disaster.   

Lets not go bonkers now. You sound like RamaCANT.

You cant be consequentialist about the PPP based on what the coalition did for 5 months... or the months after the no confidence vote. At least Ramotar handed over power without a huff and puff. But that was not the case with the coalition.

V
@VishMahabir posted:

Lets not go bonkers now. You sound like RamaCANT.

You cant be consequentialist about the PPP based on what the coalition did for 5 months... or the months after the no confidence vote. At least Ramotar handed over power without a huff and puff. But that was not the case with the coalition.

You should look up the meaning of consequentialist.   You missed the point.

T

Prashad is a separatist to the core. But he cannot see any justified reasons for the firing of so many black people except for some type of political revenge. Each one of those black people have families that depend on them financially. It is the poor East Indian people of Guyana who cannot afford to pay for armed African security and do not have any access to guns ammo and explosives that will pay the price for this political stupidity.

Prashad
Last edited by Prashad

It is during PPP governments that Indians protested at police stations for crimes not being controlled.  The PPP elite have their paid security and care little about the ordinary people, left to the mercy of bandits, including our relatives. 

Tola
@VishMahabir posted:

Far RamaCANT.....this was the same point I was making about Vincent Adams.

Your PPP is on a roll and it will come back to haunt them...there is no reason for them to weed out all the PNC (AFROS) from government.

I disagree with you.  The PNC did nothing in 5 years of rule in which they stole all the money and did nothing to show that they should be reelected to office.  We cannot keep inept performers in the government, it would insane to think so. Then they tried to steal the election. 

The PPP/c Is actually carrying out my policies. Deal with it. I am the PPP.

R
@Ramakant-P posted:

The PPP/c Is actually carrying out my policies. Deal with it. I am the PPP.

Did you teach em how to hide coke in de poke too? I bet the PPP doan even know nor care of your existence.

cain
Last edited by cain
@cain posted:

Did you teach em how to hide coke in de poke too? I bet the PPP doan even know nor care of your existence.

Rama likes to stand on his egotistical pedestal and fall into non existence from the PPP. 

Tola
@Tola posted:

Billy Ram Balgobin is one of those PPP elites, getting rich on the backs of ignorant PPP voters.

You should tell us how he is doing that. Lots of people want to know so that they can get rich too.

R
@Totaram posted:

He can't be OK.   He is delusional.

There is a pattern to my madness.  I am superior to both of you in more ways than one. I am that which I proclaimed to all the world and if that is delusional and egotistical, then I am Guilty.

R
@Ramakant-P posted:

There is a pattern to my madness.  I am superior to both of you in more ways than one. I am that which I proclaimed to all the world and if that is delusional and egotistical, then I am Guilty.

If anyone reading this knows Ramakant Persaud please get in touch with his family and let them know that he is now very very ill and needs help urgently. 

T
@Totaram posted:

If anyone reading this knows Ramakant Persaud please get in touch with his family and let them know that he is now very very ill and needs help urgently.

Why don't you? Why not tell your friends who knew me when I attended the Hindu College.

R
@Ramakant-P posted:

There is a pattern to my madness.  I am superior to both of you in more ways than one. I am that which I proclaimed to all the world and if that is delusional and egotistical, then I am Guilty.

Rama, who else you know have a pattern to their madness ?

Tola
@Totaram posted:

If anyone reading this knows Ramakant Persaud please get in touch with his family and let them know that he is now very very ill and needs help urgently.

Rama takes everything personally and seriously. He is so wrapped up in what he reads and writes, that he miss the humour included. I hope he has friends away from this forum. 

Tola
@Ramakant-P posted:

I disagree with you.  The PNC did nothing in 5 years of rule in which they stole all the money and did nothing to show that they should be reelected to office.  We cannot keep inept performers in the government, it would insane to think so. Then they tried to steal the election.

The PPP/c Is actually carrying out my policies. Deal with it. I am the PPP.

Well let me put it to you this way...things are going to change with the Trump admin gone. The new US govt is going to be sympathetic to Afros and so far YOUR PPP has allowed the opposition to make a pretty good case that the PPP is a racist government....and Guyanese will VOTE LIKE A BOSS  as they did in 2015.

Now, come 2025, if the coalition wins, I do hope that they go after you because they will come back with a vengeance, much like the PPP today, and they will make the same stupid arguments that YOU are making.

V
@VishMahabir posted:

Well let me put it to you this way...things are going to change with the Trump admin gone. The new US govt is going to be sympathetic to Afros and so far YOUR PPP has allowed the opposition to make a pretty good case that the PPP is a racist government....and Guyanese will VOTE LIKE A BOSS  as they did in 2015.

Now, come 2025, if the coalition wins, I do hope that they go after you because they will come back with a vengeance, much like the PPP today, and they will make the same stupid arguments that YOU are making.

The Democratic party will continue as the Obama Administration did.  Nothing will change.  That party is responsible for the defeat of the PPP in 1964 and again in 2015.

The PPP is not a Marxist/Leninist party anymore. They are more progressive than ever.  If you cannot see what the PPP did in the first 100 days of Ali's rule then you are very pathetic.  The PNC/R will never win another election for a long time.   It is not the afros who are denouncing the PPP as a racist party which they are not. It is a token coolies like you who are doing it. The afros are quiet because their lives have changed for the better.  My arguments are not stupid, they are very constructive.

R
@Ramakant-P posted:

The Democratic party will continue as the Obama Administration did.  Nothing will change.  That party is responsible for the defeat of the PPP in 1964 and again in 2015.

The PPP is not a Marxist/Leninist party anymore. They are more progressive than ever.  If you cannot see what the PPP did in the first 100 days of Ali's rule then you are very pathetic.  The PNC/R will never win another election for a long time.   It is not the afros who are denouncing the PPP as a racist party which they are not. It is a token coolies like you who are doing it. The afros are quiet because their lives have changed for the better.  My arguments are not stupid, they are very constructive.

Then you need to listen carefully to the words of Harmon, Granger and others and check out social media.

"Token coolies"? I am not working for the PNC. This is more than I can say for idiots like yourself who keep drinking the cool aid without critically assessing what is going on in Guyana.

This editorial was written by SN, a national newspaper which stood for democracy for the 5 months...all of a sudden they are now wrong?

V
Last edited by VishMahabir
@VishMahabir posted:

Then you need to listen carefully to the words of Harmon, Granger and others and check out social media.

"Token coolies"? I am not working for the PNC. This is more than I can say for idiots like yourself who keep drinking the cool aid without critically assessing what is going on in Guyana.

This editorial was written by SN, a national newspaper which stood for democracy for the 5 months...all of a sudden they are now wrong?

Why would I listen Harman and Granger.  What is going on in Guyana is that the PPP is busy with their progressive agenda.  They are clearing the swamp.  Using words like "idiots like, drinking cool-aid, critically assessing", does not say much for an intellectual like you. Shouting it loud, does not make it right. I would never call you an idiot for airing your constructive views.

R

You are an idiot. You obviously cant see a problem with the firing of Bynoe, Adams and others whose skills are badly needed in Guyana.

Even Jagdeo himself was guilty of firing Dr. Adams, saying that there will be a role for him.

Are they part of the swamp?

V

Many of you on this forum are postings comments without knowing the facts.

New GMC has done NOTHING to advance the Export of Fruits and Vegetables.

Did little to ease the restriction on Whiskered Fishes

Vish M
@Vish M posted:

Many of you on this forum are postings comments without knowing the facts.

New GMC has done NOTHING to advance the Export of Fruits and Vegetables.

Did little to ease the restriction on Whiskered Fishes

You are aware there are guidelines for Importing Fruit and vegetables in the USA.

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aph...e-permit-information

For the whiskered fishes [Cat Fish] ,are there any assistance from Mike Pompeo as requested by President Irfaan Ali.

Congressional and Administrative Actions

Congress and the Administration have taken several actions to assist the U.S. catfish industry.

  • In 2002, Congress passed legislation that only allowed fish in the family Ictaluridae, the family of catfish raised in the United States, to be labeled or advertised as "catfish." These labeling requirements prohibited the labeling of Vietnamese basa (Pangasius bocourti) and tra (Pangasius hypophthalmus) as catfish.1
  • In 2003, the International Trade Administration imposed antidumping duties on certain frozen fillets from Vietnam.2 These antidumping duties were upheld by the U.S. International Trade Commission in 2009 and again in 2014.
  • In 2008, Congress passed legislation to transfer responsibilities for food safety and inspection of catfish from the Food and Drug Administration to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and to designate catfish, as defined by the Secretary of Agriculture, as an "amenable species" that would be subject to mandatory inspection. A broad definition of catfish would have required inspection programs for imported species such as basa and tra to be equivalent to USDA requirements.3 USDA rulemaking that would have defined catfish has not been finalized.
  • In response, the 2014 farm bill requires inspection of all fish in the order Siluriformes, a broad definition of catfish that includes basa and tra, according to USDA requirements.4 The law requires the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service to review the production of catfish by other nations that export to the United States to determine whether they meet USDA standards. The final rule is still under review by the Office of Management and Budget.
  • https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44177.html
Django
Last edited by Django
@VishMahabir posted:

You are an idiot. You obviously cant see a problem with the firing of Bynoe, Adams and others whose skills are badly needed in Guyana.

Even Jagdeo himself was guilty of firing Dr. Adams, saying that there will be a role for him.

Are they part of the swamp?

Needed for what?  What did they do for the Coalition? I now know what you have become.  And you are not a nice person.  Do you talk about facts? You don't know the facts if you see it. They may be qualified for what the coalition hired them to do, but they were inept. The coalition and all their appointees were failures. 

Again, I caution you. Don't call me what you professed to be.

R

Fmr. PS reassigned to Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport

, Source - https://newsroom.gy/2020/11/26...ure-youth-and-sport/

Just one week after raising concerns over the revocation of her appointment as Permanent Secretary (PS) of the Ministry of Indigenous People’s Affairs, Sherie Samantha Fedee, has been reassigned to the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport.

https://newsroom.gy/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Fedee-1-750x430.jpgSherie Samantha Fedee

The News Room understands that Fedee reported for duty at the Main Street location on Wednesday, November 25, 2020. She now holds the designation of Chief Administrative Officer within the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport – a post that did not exist previously.

She reportedly still enjoys the same salary and benefits which were granted to her as the Permanent Secretary (PS) of the Ministry of Indigenous People’s Affairs.

Fedee served in the public service for 25 years but recently had her latest appointment as Permanent Secretary revoked by Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Gail Teixeira.

Fedee was appointed as a PS in 2019 but was only confirmed by the PSC on September 15, 2020.

The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government has since renamed the entity to the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs and Fedee received a letter on October 12 from Teixeira stating that since the Ministry to which she was appointed no longer exists, her appointment was “revoked.”

The former PS was sent on accumulated leave which came to an end on November 24, 2020.  She had approached the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) seeking redress.

FM
Last edited by Former Member
@Ramakant-P posted:

Needed for what?  What did they do for the Coalition? I now know what you have become.  And you are not a nice person.  Do you talk about facts? You don't know the facts if you see it. They may be qualified for what the coalition hired them to do, but they were inept. The coalition and all their appointees were failures.

Again, I caution you. Don't call me what you professed to be.

You are a knucklehead

V

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