Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon yesterday dismissed suggestions by the AFC that the work of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is being affected by government delays in clearing funds and said that the Commission has not made such a complaint to the administration.
“I am not aware that the Elections Commission made such a claim. I am, on the contrary, quite certain that the Elections Commission did not make such a claim,” Luncheon said yesterday during a press briefing at Office of the President. “And really, in the context of budgeting, where expenditure, month-by-month, [and] quarter-by-quarter, is planned by the budget agency and is provided according to that plan by the Ministry of Finance, the likelihood of sustained delays and the refusal to release financing for planned programmes by the Elections Commission is rather smallen [sic],” he added.
The AFC, on Wednesday, had expressed concern at “conflicting reports regarding the preparedness of GECOM to successfully stage the upcoming regional and general elections within the constitutional time frame.” The party said that it had been reliably informed that GECOM’s major constraint to being able to achieve the deadline was “the untimely disbursement of funds from the government.”
However, Luncheon dismissed the party’s concerns as elections-related sensationalism. “This tends to be the silly season and many times there is some need to create waves… to create issues of some sensation, to have electoral issues manufactured from thin air,” he said.
Efforts to contact GECOM yesterday for comment were unsuccessful.
Luncheon said that the administration did not “have any conceivable reason” for wanting to delay funding to GECOM. “Usually when delays occur, they are delays for a cause,” he added. According to him, “the common one is the budget agency, in this case GECOM, might decide that our submission that was adopted, around which the Ministry of Finance planned their programming and release, needs to be changed and they would move to the Ministry of Finance to get changes in their programmes.” He explained that such a situation would result in delays and he noted that it is probably the most common cause of delays.”
“I would be dismissive of the allegations made by the political party and I would see it in the context of another, probably not the last attempt by this political party, to generate issues and to make their contributions to remain in the political highlights as we approach the 2011 elections,” Luncheon stated.
Government has in the past faced similar criticisms for delays in funding to GECOM, including last year when party scrutineers complained had not been paid for months for services provided.
