Thursday’s pronouncement by GECOM Chair Justice (Rtd) Claudette Singh that GECOM will not be ready for general elections until the end of February 2020 contravenes the express requirement in the Guyana Constitution for elections to be held speedily in the aftermath of a motion of no-confidence. It defies belief that given her jurisprudential experience and her presiding over an election petition case where she made a ground-breaking ruling that Justice Singh would be so dismissive of the clear meaning of articles 106 (6) and (7) of the Guyana Constitution.
If meeting the requirements of those articles required the abandoning of the raw, untested data of the controversial house-to-house registration process then that was what Justice Singh needed to do. She has failed to discharge her obligation as a custodian of constitutional strictures. Justice Singh has pulled a date magically out of nowhere. She must urgently publish the schedule that led her to the end of February and explain to the public how those schedules will be kept and whether there could be any compression of the timeframes.
As her February decision will be seen as a capitulation to the demands of APNU+AFC, Justice Singh now faces a monumental hurdle in convincing all of the electorate that she will be fair and evenhanded in her decision making.
Now that he has been given an approximate date for general elections, the public expects that President Granger will declare a date for the polls as he has promised to do on many occasions. This date should ideally fall at the end of February so that there will be sufficient time for the preparation of a budget for 2020 by the incoming administration.
