Executive member of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) Dr David Hinds yesterday accused Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo of willfully submitting nominees who are politically aligned for the Gecom Chair with the aim of forcing President David Granger to appoint someone of his own choosing.
“The PPP is playing politics with everything it does and our view in the WPA is that the PPP is putting forward these lists in a very provocative way because they want to push the President to unilaterally appoint. They keep hammering at that… so what they are doing is that they are giving him lists that he would reject with the hope that he would appoint a Gecom Chairman on his own and then they would say, oh you see what we were saying all along? And so in that regard we are in solidarity with the President in terms of not falling for the PPP’s trap,” Hinds said.
So far, Jagdeo has submitted two lists to Granger but each has been rejected. He has now agreed to submit a third list. In keeping with the Constitution, Jagdeo is to submit a list of six nominees from which Granger is to make a choice.
Speaking at a press conference, Hinds said the party’s yardstick for the successful candidate is that he or she must not be an openly partisan person.
He said the WPA has objected to the lists submitted by Jagdeo on the grounds that each has included some person or persons aligned to the PPP and this the party feels is a “non starter”.
Following the rejection of the first list, Granger sent Jagdeo a submission on the “Qualities of the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission,” which says the candidate should be a person who is qualified to be a High Court Judge and should have been an attorney for a minimum of seven years. It said that in the absence of candidates who do not meet these qualifications, “any other fit and proper person” should be appointed. In this regard, the statement specifies that such persons should have the following characteristics:
“a) that person is deemed to have wide electoral knowledge, capable of handling electoral matters because he or she is qualified to exercise unlimited jurisdiction in civil matters
- b) That person will discharge his or her functions without fear or favour, that is he or she will not allow any person or organization to influence him or her to compromise his or her neutrality;
- c) That person will discharge his or her functions neutrally, between the two opposing parties as he or she would have done in Court between two opposing litigants;
- d) That person will not be an activist in any form (gender, racial, religious etc)
- e) That person should not have any political affiliation or should not belong to any political party in any form, apparent or hidden;
- f) That person should have a general character of honesty, integrity, faithfulness and diligence in the discharge of his or her duty as Chairman.”
Asked yesterday about the list of requirements outlined by the President, Hinds said the WPA, “has not gone there. Our view is that the chairman of Gecom should be someone who is not openly aligned to any of the political parties. We want to make that extremely clear and we think it is worrying that the matter is being dragged out for this long but we feel that we have to get it right.”
Asked if he agreed with the view that all the persons on the list should be acceptable to the President and should follow the criteria outlined in the constitution, he said for the WPA, “the non-partisan nature is very important”.
He said that the President must have a range to choose from. “I think if you give him two that are acceptable to choose one, you don’t give him much elbow room there. I think at least four or five of those people should be acceptable to the President …that the President must have scope when he is making a choice. If you give him a list and only two people are …non-partisan you don’t give him much to work with so I would say at a bare minimum four of the people on the list should be openly non-partisan and that is our view.”
He said the President has added other requirements, but the party has not looked at that as it is not an area of emphasis. On the attaching of additional criteria, he said that constitutions are explicit and inherent and as such the President is reading it that way. He said that the WPA respects that. “We are reading from the stand point of non-partisan,” he stressed.
On May 2 Jagdeo submitted a list which comprised retired judges BS Roy and William Ramlal, attorneys Oneidge Walrond-Allicock, Nadia Sagar and Kashir Khan and businessman Gerry Gouveia in keeping with certain criteria outlined by Granger. The first list was submitted in January.
Several weeks later Granger announced that it was rejected and later invited Jagdeo to a meeting at State House to further discuss the matter. Following that meeting it was agreed that a third list of nominees would be submitted and that a high-level team will be established to explore all modalities for a resolution should this list be rejected.
A joint statement by the two sides issued by the Ministry of the Presidency stated that upon an invitation from the President, Jagdeo and a team consisting of PPP/C MPs Anil Nandall and Irfaan Ali met with Granger and a team comprising Minister of State Joseph Harmon and Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman to consult on the way forward for the selection of a Gecom Chairman in accordance with Article 161 (2) of the Constitution of Guyana.
According to the statement, the two parties agreed that it would be in the best interest of the people of Guyana that the choice of a Chairperson of Gecom is made “without undue delay”.
It was further agreed that the Leader of the Opposition will submit “a new list of six names to the President”. The statement did not state the timeframe in which Jagdeo is to submit what would now be his third list of nominees.
It was also agreed that a high-level team would be assembled “representing the President and the Leader of the Opposition which will begin to work immediately on exploring modalities to bring a resolution to this matter in the event that the list is rejected.” The statement provided no details on how soon this team would be assembled.
Jagdeo had publicly expressed confidence in the second list as according to him five of those listed met the criteria outlined by the President.
The Guyana Bar Association has since called for an urgent appointment of a Gecom Chair; the post has been vacant for over three months now.
