There can be no head of state since 1980 who has displayed more of a capacity for temporising than President David Granger. Whether it is a personality feature or a consequence of cold, calculating decision-making, or a combination of the two, will be for the historians of the future to decide, if not the voters before then. Whatever the case, he is inflicting unnecessary damage on the nation at the constitutional level, the institutional level and the level of ordinary Guyanese, many of whom find the delays he is orchestrating both exhausting and nerve-wracking.
Here we are, still without a Gecom chair and the President seemingly in no hurry to even meet the Leader of the Opposition on the matter, let alone follow the requirements of the constitution in relation to making an appointment to the post. The constitution requires that the Opposition Leader present a list of six names to the President who selects one “not unacceptable” to him. We are in this position now because Mr Granger rejected a series of three lists submitted by Mr Bharrat Jagdeo, and then made a unilateral appointment to the post of Gecom chairperson which was ruled unconstitutional by the CCJ.
Some of the names on Mr Jagdeo’s lists seemed eminently suitable to observers of a rational disposition, but President Granger by his actions made it apparent that he was not interested in anyone with credentials of fairness; what he wanted was someone whom he felt would have a government bent. The CCJ judges in hazarding an idea about how the danger that the head of state would reject the entire list could be obviated, suggested that perhaps the President and Opposition Leader could meet informally to agree on six persons who met the eligibility requirements, and the names of whom could then be formally submitted by Mr Jagdeo.
President Granger has seized on this to insist that he ‘must’ be able to submit names which Mr Jagdeo ‘must’ then place on the list to be submitted to him. This is, in effect, as Mr Ramkarran pointed out last Sunday, a way of ensuring that he can appoint his own nominee. There is, however, nothing in the constitution which makes provision for the President to have any say in the compilation of the list and neither did the judges at the Caribbean court so interpret it; his responsibility in relation to the names comes after the list is submitted to him. It is a case of President Granger giving his own eccentric reading of the statements of the CCJ as he has famously done in relation to the constitution. Unfortunately for him, that does not change the reality. In any event, as it is the Opposition Leader rejected the two names he put forward.
Thereafter everything stalled. On Saturday last week President Granger went to Cuba, but he returned this week on Tuesday, and still nothing happened. While Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield rampages ahead with a house-to-house registration exercise that clashes with the constitution, the President sits in State House and makes no move to retrieve the situation. On Wednesday Director-General of the Ministry of the Presidency Joseph Harmon told Stabroek News that the government was working to have engagements between the President and Opposition Leader “very soon.”
This is all very puzzling. What work needs to be done to arrange a meeting between the head of state and his opposition counterpart? Granted, the President may be busy with all kinds of commitments, but if he regards the appointment of a Gecom chairperson as a priority, then he will certainly find the time for it. For his part, Mr Jagdeo has indicated his preparedness to meet at any time and even daily if necessary.
“Talks were never broken off…” Mr Harmon told this newspaper. No doubt they weren’t, but they didn’t continue either. Before the President submitted his two names, we had reached the stage where President Granger had found four of the persons suggested by Mr Jagdeo “not unacceptable.” Afterwards, on July 18, the Opposition Leader had put forward four additional names, but nothing more has been heard of these. It surely cannot take so long for the President to decide whether they are “not unacceptable” to him or otherwise.
Last Friday the President was reported as saying that Mr Jagdeo’s rejection of his two nominees was a recipe for “gridlock”. This appears to be a reference to a view which he had expressed last year when he said that the Carter formula had outlived its usefulness. In respect of the Gecom chair specifically, he had been quoted as saying “It is like going to a cricket match and taking your own umpire … We need to have an impartial process.” And since with Justice Patterson in the first instance, and now his two rejected nominees he is being thwarted in being able to have his own “umpire” he will no doubt claim that gridlock is being created.
What can be said is that from his behaviour it is clear that “impartiality” is the last thing he wants. Whatever the shortcomings of the Carter formula and the desirability of electoral reform, for the time being the system is what it is, and the President should accept that.
It took an inordinately long time before President Granger unilaterally appointed Justice Patterson to the Gecom chair. The head of state dillied and dallied between the submission of each of Mr Jagdeo’s lists. And his resentment of the Carter formula should not constitute an excuse for him not to act with celerity now. If procrastination is all part of a strategy to avoid an election by September 18, that will soon become apparent not just to the local electorate, but the international community as well, with the inevitable consequences which that entails.