Outlining the legislative agenda for his ministry, Attorney General Anil Nandlall on Friday said that reform of the election laws and constitution are high on the agenda.
Nandlall told the House that the ministry will spearhead wide-ranging reforms, including legislative reforms to the electoral process to make it “stronger, more transparent, more accountable and to ensure that it is manned by persons of high integrity and professional ethics, so as to prevent the electoral machinery from being hijacked by political fraudsters, who cannot win government through the will of the people.”
Speaking during the debate of the 2020 national budget at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, he said that this was a promise made by the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) in its manifesto.
It took five months before the results of the March 2nd polls were finalised. While both the governing A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) coalition and the PPP/C had claimed victory at the polls, the results of a national recount of all ballots cast would, however, show that it was the PPP/C which had won the elections with 233,336 votes to the coalition’s 217,920.
The elections were mired in controversy over the tabulation of votes for Electoral District Four, whose Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo has been accused of blatantly attempting to manipulate figures in favour of the coalition and decreasing votes for the PPP/C. Mingo and a number of other persons including Chief Elections Officer of Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Keith Lowenfield and executive member of APNU Volda Lawrence are all currently facing election-fraud related charges.
The recount is said by coalition commissioners of the GECOM to have revealed numerous anomalies affecting the credibility of the polls. The APNU+AFC has since filed election petitions challenging the final declaration.
On the issue of constitutional reform, Nandlall said that this was another promise made for which work will begin shortly, utilising the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Constitutional Reform as the launching pad to execute the government’s agenda on constitutional reform.
He said that this process will be driven by what he described as a very broad-based vehicle comprising government and the opposition on the one hand and civil society on the other, in equal partnership with nationwide consultations.
During his address to the House on Friday, Opposition Leader Joseph Harmon called for constitutional reform to be given “priority,” prompting questions from the members of the government benches who demanded to know why the coalition didn’t make constitutional reform a priority while it was in office.
Harmon also stressed the need for electoral reforms.
