Georgetown: Foreign Affairs Minister Karen Cummings said she was told to revoke International and local observer’s accreditation but that she wasn’t in agreement that should be done.
However, she did not say who gave her those instructions.
International and local observers were on Thursday dumbfounded as they saw her statement as a threat even though she tried to apologise in its aftermath.
President of the Guyana Bar Association who was at the meeting told the Minister that “I think you should stop; you have been given an avenue to exit. I suggest that you take that.”
The meeting was called in a room at the Command Centre of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) on High and Hadfield Streets, Georgetown.
Minister Cummings left was confronted at the meeting by former Barbadian Prime Minister Owen Arthur, who heads the Commonwealth Observer Mission.
“I speak on behalf of the Commonwealth, the largest organisation of people in the world, and I am not going to have, not me, the Commonwealth disrespected by a threat to take away the accreditation,” Arthur declared.
He held out his accreditation badge, telling Cummings that he would volunteer to hand it back.
Even as Dr Cummings suggested that she should take back her words and apologised, Mr Arthur continued that he would speak with the Commonwealth Secretary-General and that in doing so he has a duty to report to her accurately. “…I cannot now avoid speaking accurately,” Arthur stated.
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