The BBC writes...
For the second time in two years Dennis Chabrol has been elected President of the Guyana Press Association (GPA) while Capitol News's Gordon Moseley was elected his vice-president at yesterday's Annual General Meeting (AGM) held at the Chronicle Sports Club.
Chabrol, 40, got the nod from 24 out of the 48 eligible voters who attended the meeting. Moseley, who also contested that position, received 15 votes and NCN's Martin Goolsaran trailed with nine. The meeting was not without its controversy, as outgoing President Julia Johnson stated in her farewell speech that she would not support Chabrol for president which caused some concern for Chabrol's Guyana Media Uniters (GMU) which was contesting the presidency, vice-presidency, secretary, treasurer, assistant secretary and two committee member positions.
In the end the GMU took five of the seven positions on the executive. In addition to Chabrol who secured the presidency, Nigel Williams of the Stabroek News was elected secretary; Shonette Moore of News 2, assistant secretary; and Oluatoyin Alleyne and Neil Marks of the Stabroek News and the Guyana Chronicle respectively, committee members. The other two positions that had been contested by the GMU were the vice-presidency, which Moseley won after a coin was flipped when he and the GMU's Frank Wilson of Kaieteur News each received 24 votes; and the post of treasurer, won by Nazima Ragubir of Prime News who beat the GMU's Christopher Yaw of Stabroek News by one vote.
Others voted in as committee members were Enrico Woolford of Capitol News and Paul McAdam of the Evening News. The GMU had been campaigning weeks before the election and had garnered support from many media workers outside Georgetown who were unable to attend the meeting. The GMU had hoped that members could have voted for their absent supporters by way of proxy, however, all 18 of the proxy forms were rejected because they were not on a form issued by the GPA and they were not in the handwriting of the person who had issued them.
Chabrol, the new president, has been a media practitioner all his working life, having entered radio on a work-study attachment at the now defunct Guyana Broadcasting Corporation in 1984. He began his media career as an Audio Control Operator and later got involved in on-air, news and current affairs productions before leaving to work as Chief of the Caribbean News Agency's (CANA) (now the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) Bureaus in Georgetown and in Antigua for the Leeward Islands. Currently, he is the correspondent for Agence France Presse and one of the local contributors to the Caribbean Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Guyana 360: Congrats there Mr. Dennis and We look forward to a more vibrant media that will be more investigative and dish out more intellegent stories
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