November 24, 2024

Around the Regions

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Scales on the eyes

L R Alston Stewart, Joe Harmon and PJ Patterson

PARLIAMENTARY OPPOSITION A PARTNERSHIP FOR NATIONAL UNITY

ALLIANCE FOR CHANGE (APNU+AFC) credits Political Strategist, Mr. Alston Stewart, for

tipping the scales in their favour in the 2015 national and regional polls.

Then, according to Public Works Minister, Bishop Juan Anthony Edghill, the coalition

government awarded Stewart a $72M contract to provide the administration with scales. When

Edgehill’s Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) was returned to power last August, it ordered

a forensic audit.

What it unearthed was a stunner: Stewart neither scaled back nor scaled down on the item. The

audit found no evidence of the scales.

“ The forensic audit has indicated to us that these monies were paid to a company called Netpro, a

company supposedly out of Jamaica. One hundred percent of the contract sum was paid to the

supplier not 50 percent, and we don’t have the scales “ ; Edghill said.

The funding was approved under Minister of Public Infrastructure (now Public Works) and

General Secretary of the AFC, Mr. David Patterson.

According to Edghill, Stewart is the political strategist that boasted putting the marriage of the

APNU and the AFC together to oust the PPPC from power after 23 years of continuous rule.

“This is the owner of the company, ” Minister Edghill noted.

He said former Patterson acted unprofessionally but may have also acted illegally when he paid

his political strategist 100 percent without even getting the scales.

Mr. Raphael Trotman went to Jamaica. I think cricket was playing or something and the media

asked him a question about his government’s close relationship with the PNP of Jamaica and this

is what he said: ‘I quote among the benefits of the close association Trotman insist was the loan

to Guyana of senior PNP election strategist and media owner, Alston Stewart who was the

driving force behind the coalition’s narrow 5360 win over the longstanding Peoples Progressive

Party Civic which had ruled Guyana for 23 years prior to the May General elections’ “; Minister

Edghill stated.

 

“ It is not a different Stewart, it’s the very Stewart and Trotman is verifying that Alston Stewart

was their political strategist, ”

It was the same Alston Stewart who got arrested some time ago during the APNU+AFC

reign for travelling with ammunition, Edghill recalled.