A meeting yesterday of the seven-member Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) ended without a decision on the way forward on poll preparations.
“There were no decisions based on the submissions we have made to the commissioners,” Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield told reporters following the meeting.
Lowenfield consistently refrained from offering a timeline for elections, while noting that he would only speak to a timeline agreed by the Commission. He, however, acknowledged that if elections were to be held in July, the current voters’ list, the validity of which expires at the end of April, cannot be used and a new list would need to be produced.
He stressed that one option is to forego house-to-house registration and proceed with a claims and objections exercise that could see a valid list created in as little as two months.
“This list expires on April 30th and the production of a new list will have to be guided by the Commission. We can move toward the conduct, as I said yesterday, of a claims and objections exercise of a duration to be specified by the Commission so that we can arrive at a list,” Lowenfield explained.
“Claims allow for the youthful to be added and objections for the deceased to be removed based on the submission made by the GRO [Guyana Register Office]. Other deaths not reported to GRO, when we are in the field, people will come to us and say Jagmohan next door died and we want his name to be removed. It is a limited way to cleanse the list. One of the options before the operations committee speaks to that,” he further explained.
Asked to address claims that the current voters’ list is bloated with the deceased, Lowenfield stressed that “any exercise going forward beyond April 30 will see an opportunity to utilise the timing we have to as best as possible sort the issues that may exist.”
He went on to note that a list is never clean as “every electoral list has Tom, Dick and Beharry who might be deceased.”
PPP/C-nominated commissioner Robeson Benn is, however, holding fast to the March deadline that represents three months since the passage of the no-confidence motion against government and he is accusing the GECOM Secretariat of being complicit in delaying elections.
According to Benn he is not willing to entertain any other timeline. “I’m not moving on to any other option until you consider the first option, which is holding elections within the constitutional timeline of March 19, 2019 and we have considered and exhausted that. Then we can move on to other timelines,” he maintained yesterday.
He added that the Secretariat has not provided commissioners with work plans or schedules related to the various aspects of holding elections and stressed that while it had proposed first 90 and now 105 days for the training of Election Day staff, it can be accomplished in 29 or 32 days since thousands have already been trained for last November’s local government elections
“Just now they said you need nine weekends to accomplish training. You don’t need that. You need three weekends at the most. This is why I say there is a situation which is going along with one side of the national equation which wants to avoid us having elections within a constitutional timeline,” he said.
‘Totally unacceptable’
Benn’s response to the timelines was later echoed in a press statement from the PPP, which deemed GECOM’s proposed timelines “as totally unacceptable, given that these demonstrate a worrying deviation from its mandate, which is to act in compliance with the Constitution of Guyana.”
“The successful passage of the no-confidence motion, the validity of which has been upheld by both the legislature and the judiciary, at the level of the High Court, triggered General and Regional Elections and dictates that these must be held by March 19, 2019. The PPP will not accept any timelines that are beyond timeframe that is constitutionally stipulated for General and Regional Elections. No delays will be accepted,” it stressed.
The party drew attention to Lowenfield’s admission that he held a meeting of key Secretariat staffers on December 22nd, 2018, a day after the December 21st, 2018 vote on the no-confidence motion, to address a work plan in preparation for elections. It also pointed out that GECOM’s Public Relations Officer (PRO) Yolanda Ward had reportedly said that GECOM was well prepared and would uphold its constitutional mandate and would have to immediately put systems in place for the holding of polls.
According to the PPP, these actions and statements do not align with the current tone of the Secretariat, which it said has apparently been influenced by “the continued employment of delay tactics by the Government nominated Commissioners at GECOM.” It said this tonal shift has “solidified concerns about the Coalition Government’s influence over a constitutional body.”
Further, the party stressed that while President David Granger remains president until another president is sworn in, he must not ignore the ruling of Chief Justice (ag) Roxane George-Wiltshire, who made it clear that upon the passage of the no-confidence motion against the APNU+AFC Coalition Government, the Cabinet “stood resigned.”
“The President, therefore, must act accordingly. The refusal of the Chief Justice (ag) to grant a stay of her decision, on the request of the Attorney General, makes it clear that the 90-day timeline remains in effect and the clock is ticking. The President, although he seems unwilling, must act accordingly to uphold our Constitution,” the party said.
