President David Granger and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday ended weeks of deadlock, leading to the selection of retired Justice of Appeal Claudette Singh SC as the new Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), thereby clearing a key hurdle on the path towards the holding of general elections.
Justice Singh, who will be the first female chair of GECOM, was selected following a meeting between the two leaders yesterday and the announcement came amid growing pressure for a new appointee in the aftermath of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) ruling on June 18th that Granger’s unilateral appointment of retired judge James Patterson as Chairman was unconstitutional. Patterson subsequently resigned from the post. His unilateral appointment had come after Granger rejected three lists of candidates in 2017 from Jagdeo.
The new GECOM Chairman will immediately face two major issues: how to handle the CCJ edict that Article 106 (6) of the constitution requires general elections in three months from June 18th, 2019, when the CCJ validated the passage of a motion of no-confidence against the APNU+AFC government on December 21st, 2018. The new Chairman will also have to preside over a deeply divided GECOM on the question of whether controversial house-to-house registration for a new national register should be halted.