Dear Editor,
Ever since the 1997 elections that ended with the president-to-be Janet Jagan throwing a legal court document over her shoulder, and the haste with which the then GECOM Chairman and soon-to-be Attorney General Mr Doodnauth Singh, rushed to have that inauguration ceremony, it began to highlight the fact that GECOM was being compromised.
We are now 13 years past that very controversial election and we see the government issuing a directive to GECOM on where they should place certain advertisements.
GECOM I thought was a body that operated independently of government. So you must understand my surprise and utter dismay, when I read that an internal matter like the placement of advertisements was being dictated to GECOM by the government. How could this be? It leaves one to wonder, that if an internal issue like the placement of advertisements can be dictated by the government, what else is government telling GECOM to do?
The opposition and civil society should vigorously protest this interference in GECOM’s affairs by the government. Guyanese cannot sit back and allow this kind of meddling to be done with GECOM and expect elections to be ‘free and fair.’
If in fact the Chairman does accept and follow these instructions from the government as to where he must place the commission’s ads, then Guyanese can no longer have faith in the credibility of the GECOM, since it would have been compromised. Guyana needs to have an electoral governing body that is truly autonomous and is allowed to function without the long fingers of government fiddling with its operations.
Yours faithfully,
Richard Francois
Dubai