Roger Harper can only win GCA elections with deciet and trickery

On the eve of the Georgetown Cricket Association elections former national cricketer Neil Barry has said that incumbent President "[Roger] Harper should see the writing on the wall and he could only defeat [Alfred] Mentore by deceit and trickery".

The long awaited Georgetown Cricket Association (GCA) Annual General Meeting is set to finally take place this afternoon amidst fears of underhanded and illegal dealings on the part of Roger Harper. The Annual General Meeting at which the election of office bearers for the upcoming year takes place was originally set for the 26th January 2011; but when it was clear that the incumbent President Roger Harper was not going to be re-elected he contrived a frivolous and self-created reason to have the elections postponed. One former Test captain said he was "disappointed that Roger would be party to such dishonesty and deceit for the sake of a cricket office". However the apparent dishonesty and deception of Roger Harper is now in high gear with former administrators of now defunct cricket clubs; being the GUYSTACK Trade II and the Guyana National Service both saying that they have been approached by Harper to "pretend to be in existence for the sole purpose of voting at the AGM today". 

The accusations of dishonesty and deceit against Harper, a former Test cricketer and coach, is not new. Allegations abound during his tenure of office of financial impropriety; indeed most of it involved GCA Board members and not Harper. However, one former National Cricketer who is on Harper's current GCA Board said "it doesn't matter whether Harper is the one accused of financial swindling, what is important is that as the President of GCA he must be aware of it and is doing nothing to stop it". These allegations are being made against Harper at a time when television stations in Guyana broadcast the Executive Committee Meeting of the Demerara Cricket Board, of which Harper is a member, which displayed Harper's unruly, uncouth and obstinate behaviour. Since the broadcasts have begun Harper and his associate, the embattled Bisoondyal Singh, have been the laughing stock of the cricket fraternity.

However, a former Guyana and West Indies cricket captain who is familiar with Harper said he hoped that Harper would not stoop to such levels to keep a cricket administrator job; he added that he was disappointed that "Roger would be involved in such underhand practices as trying to inflate the list of clubs eligible to vote by improperly including defunct and phantom clubs to get votes against legitimate club who are entitled to have a full say in cricket administration in Georgetown". 

When contacted yesterday Bissoondyal Singh in a invited comment said that he was sure Harper would win since "it was simple mathematics having regard to the number of clubs voting". Bissoondyal went on to say there were no defunct clubs registered but admitted that some of the clubs now registered for the elections today had not played cricket for years and in fact did not have active cricket teams or administrators; "but they could come and vote now that we have re-registered them" so there should be no objection to them.