“We have to have national elections in 2011,” Jagdeo told reporters, as he stated that the holding of these elections in the stipulated year is very important.
With constant delays in the run off of local government elections and the government’s new attempts at engaging the opposition parties on local government reform, questions have been raised as to whether the holding of local government polls would delay the holding of national elections.
Asked if the government would forego the holding of local government elections to ensure the holding of national elections in 2011, Jagdeo said that it was an issue that had to be addressed during the engagement with all the opposition parties. “Now I’m told that there is some legal issue against holding two elections in the same year, so then it means that we have a narrow window if that is accurate. And then it’s not wise, probably, to do two elections in a single year. So these are issues that have to be discussed,” Jagdeo said, at a news conference at Office of the President yesterday. “So, I don’t want to be premature before we have that first engagement to scope out what we are looking at here,” he stated.
On Thursday, Opposition Leader Robert Corbin said that the issues associated with the local government reform should not affect next year’s general elections. “…Nothing must result in the extension of the term limit of the present administration beyond the five years,” he said.
Jagdeo said that after the first meeting is held between the government and the opposition, greater clarity on the way forward should be achieved. He noted that no timeline has been set in terms of concluding the new attempts to reform the local government system. He, however, acknowledged that the April date that had been suggested for the holding of local government elections is not possible, given the fact that the associated nomination day has since passed.
Explaining the decision to make a final attempt to conclude the local government reform, Jagdeo said that his party wanted to go into 2011 elections with “some level of civility,” thereby avoiding a repeat of the past. Regarding various statements from the opposition parties, Jagdeo said that he did not want to be drawn into the “rhetoric.” “I want to be helpful without being drowned by this rhetoric and sucked into a tit-for-tat and responding to them on every issue,” he said, while opining that the opposition parties may not be ready for local government elections. “I suspect they are not ready but I don’t want to get into this rhetoric,” he said.
According to Jagdeo, it is important that local government elections be held so that a new core of leaders can emerge to do the work at the local level, thereby easing the burden on the central government. Local government elections have been due since 1997.
Meanwhile, Jagdeo voiced his concern about the large amounts of money spent on elections, and expressed his disappointment with the way the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) procures some of its materials. Stating that Guyana spends a disproportionate amount on elections, especially when compared with other countries, he criticised GECOM for single sourcing materials instead of choosing an open competitive process, especially when these items were not of a proprietary nature. “I have a huge problem with the way they source materials at GECOM,” Jagdeo said. Jagdeo added that while this may have been understandable when the country was rushing to hold general elections in 2006, there is no excuse now. “But now when we have all of this time, we knew local government elections were going to be held, and we have time to plan our procurement, we should minimise single sourcing, we should go to more open competitive tenders,” he said. “…I am very appalled by the number of requests that we received for single sourcing,” he added.
On Thursday, Jagdeo announced that a final attempt would be made to conclude the reform of the local government system, before the holding of the long-delayed elections. . “I have discussed this with the People’s Progressive Party and they have very reluctantly agreed that we should make one last ditch attempt to resolve the issues raised by the opposition,” Jagdeo told reporters, during an impromptu briefing. He added, “We want to set a climate where we go into [general] elections in 2011 with very little controversy, so we are going to be engaging again, I think, through the parliamentary process to see if we can resolve the outstanding issues surrounding the other bits of legislation that were tabled in parliament.”
It was his first public statement on local government elections after a recent meeting with Opposition Leader Robert Corbin, who has led the call for agreed legislative reforms to be implemented before the polls are run off. The AFC has said that its participation in the polls would depend on the implementation of the reforms. (See other story below.)
