Dear Editor,
One of the points made in the letter `For GECOM to be in a perpetual state of readiness it must also be in a continued state of development – SN of 26 July, 2019’ reads as follows:
“One such obstacle is continued political interference which stifles GECOM’s role as an impartial agency. This is perhaps the most despairing in a series of obstacles that needs immediate attention and resolution.”
One could not agree more with this very pertinent observation, except that it cannot be successfully argued that GECOM has ever had any pretensions to being ‘an impartial agency’ divided as is its ‘management’ structure between two contesting parties.
The records would show that both of their representative teams, along with the Chairman of the times, stoutly refused to consider the eminent observation made by the Carter Center Observer Mission to the 2006 general elections – to the effect that the very bipartisan formula they themselves had previously recommended had proven ‘sterile’.
Accordingly, the team recommended a new organisation structure, whereby GECOM would be managed by a neutral professional team, (over a specified period of say three years), who would report direct to the National Assembly.
It was remarked that such a construct obtained in CARICOM countries like Barbados and Jamaica; in Canada and elsewhere in the Commonwealth.
The fact is however, that this suggested reformation was not even discussed by those who saw their mythical life tenure on the Commission as threatened.
So that now is an opportunity for the complainant’s party to seize the initiative to have this palpable institutional defect addressed with a will and utmost urgency.
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
