Alliance For Change (AFC) Chairman, Khemraj Ramjattan says the administration’s order to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to submit ads and notices for publication through government’s procurement website is ultimately part of moves to postpone general elections to 2013.
The Office of the President (OP) recently directed GECOM to submit its advertisements and notices for publication through the new government procurement website. In correspondence dated September 16, Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon specified that advertisements/notices “with the exception of those associated with discharging GECOM’s constitutional and legal responsibilities (Orders, Notices, Acts and Amendments)” must be submitted to the Government Information Agency (GINA) for placement on www.eprocure.gov.gy.
However, GECOM is currently conducting a continuous registration exercise which is a precursor to the next general elections, constitutionally due late next year. The poll preparations will involve significant public awareness and education work across the country. GECOM Chairman Dr Steve Surujbally has told this newspaper that GECOM’s civic and voter education activities cannot be done solely using the website. “We are fighting that,” he said. He noted that GECOM received the advisory like other “budget agencies.” In addition to GECOM, the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act of 2003 also made the Parliament Office, the Office of the Auditor General, the Supreme Court, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Office of the Ombudsman, budget agencies.
Surujbally said that while the Act encroaches on the commission’s constitutional mandate, it is an issue that the body has left to be solved by the parliament since it created the problem.
In an invited comment yesterday, Ramjattan said that the government wants to “frustrate” the independence of GECOM and create a crisis within the body because the officials are going to retaliate against what the government is ordering them to do and “that is going to force a crisis”.
“The government knows this and the government is going to disparage GECOM as a body and say it is wasting money (by advertising in the newspapers)…and this is going to create an intractable problem between GECOM and the government of Guyana”, Ramjattan charged. He said that Surujbally will be disparaged by the government because he will not want his constitutional mandate to be stripped by the government. This, Ramjattan said, will create a crisis in which the administration will want to deny money to GECOM. He said that such action would further negatively affect the present registration exercises and this can lead to a lot of problems which can see the delaying of a proper voters’ list.
According to Ramjattan, this will play straight into the hands of the PPP which wants a delay of national elections by two years. He said that the AFC has noted there have been certain events such as the government’s closure of the Media Monitoring Unit and sees this as taking away the powers of GECOM, “a kind of dilution of the sets of power GECOM exercises”. He said that the advertising order is a “sinister motive” towards the further dilution of that power.
Ramjattan said that the AFC has received information, which was shared with the Private Sector Commission when they met recently, that the administration “deliberately wants a deferral of elections of 2011 to 2013”.
It is believed that the reference to GECOM’s “constitutional and legal” responsibilities would offer room for manoeuvring in the placement of ads and notices. Luncheon has stated that the government intends “to migrate” as many government ads and notices from the print media, which he has described as the more expensive means of advertising. However, he has said some categories of notices would be placed in traditional media, on the basis of existing legislation in some instances.
Since the government’s announcement of its decision, state agencies have discontinued ads previously published in the newspapers. Among them are GuySuCo and GPL.
Last month, GuySuCo requested that all of its ads to be published in the four daily newspapers be discontinued and this newspaper learnt that the corporation would be publishing its ads on the state website. Earlier, the power company also informed via email that it would be “pulling all print and electronic advertisements with immediate effect.”
