A draft of proposed amendments to the Representation of the People Act should be completed by the end of next month after which the opposition and citizens will be able to make inputs.
“The idea is to make more transparent and to define responsibilities in the Act that are unambiguous and… to put in place a set of penalties for people who may try to steal the elections,” Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday told a press conference, where he announced the move.
“Any right-thinking person will support that. That’s the objective. Every person will have a chance to have an input. So, we are soliciting these views. Eventually there will be a draft, hopefully by the end of June – a draft bill. Then that draft will be sent to the international community, all the political parties in Guyana, civil society bodies and GECOM too, and will be up on the website. Then people would have 3 months in Guyana to give their input,” he added.
The Vice President said that government will ensure a holistic revamping of the current law and that citizens will determine what they want for the country. “We will look at issues right from registration to declaration of the results, so everything that is not unambiguous, not transparent etcetera. We made it clear that we want SoPs [Statements of Poll] in the public domain before the tabulation starts, that sort of thing,” he said.
“Everyone will get a chance. So when that is done, APNU will get a chance to give their input there and several civil society organisations. And then when that’s done, a draft bill would be had, taking into account the input made and it will be presented to the parliament, where the Parliamentary Opposition will once again have an input,” he further added.
Local government elections are to be held before the end of this year and it is yet unclear how these planned reforms will affect its scheduling.
Meanwhile, Jagdeo said that the PPP/C has made it clear that it will not accept Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield to be a part of any other elections in this country. The same, he said, goes for District Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo.
“Before the elections are held, we’ve made it clear that Lowenfied and the others cannot conduct the elections. These are people who tried to steal the elections. They can’t be there to conduct any future elections in this country,” he charged.
Jagdeo’s announcement yesterday came on the heels of recent contentions over a planned US-funded electoral reform project to be led by the International Republican Institute (IRI).
The opposition APNU+AFC and some civil society groups have criticised the project, going as far as to warn that it undermines sovereignty as it is spearheaded by the IRI. However, Jagdeo yesterday said that the opposition wants to cherry pick foreign support.
He pointed out that the opposition had in 2015 supported the USAID-funded ‘Vote Like a Boss’ initiative, even when the PPP/C had registered its concerns.
“The IRI, in 2011 and 2015 – APNU didn’t have a problem with them. We had some issues with them but APNU embraced the suggestions of the IRI, especially with the ‘Vote Like a Boss’ campaign. It started with the IRI, they funded it…and now in 2020, because they are coming to support, not to lead but support, a democratic process, now [they object],” Jagdeo said.
“…We support the entire international community being involved – CARICOM, the Commonwealth, everyone but involved in supporting transparency and democracy, they’ve always done that, but the process would be led by Guyanese,” he added.
In addition to the opposition, the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) has come out strongly against the project, while civil society groups representing the Afro-Guyanese community have also rejected it.
The GHRA described the timing of the project as “wrong”, the implementing agency as “unacceptable” and labeled the preparatory work as “having not yet begun”.
Describing itself as being in an unusual position of opposing the reform project, the GHRA in a press release had said that it is concerned that “moving forward on this project will not only fail to achieve its goal but will also further postpone the prospects for the future reform that Guyana so badly needs”. The GHRA said that “it remains a wholehearted supporter of electoral reform,” but “electoral reform, like the aftermath of a building ravaged by fire, needs a period of cooling off before sustainable reconstruction can succeed.”
The selection of the IRI to lead the electoral reform project, says GHRA, is a “bizarre choice.” The GHRA said that the IRI’s Board members are a veritable who’s who of the Republican establishment, including party grandees such as Senators Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney and Dan Anderson. With the exception of Romney, the release said, none of the other IRI stalwarts have publicly distanced themselves from the Trump-led mayhem following the November US election results, nor from the persecution of Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney for doing so, nor from the on-going Republican campaign to disenfranchise voters in traditionally democratic States. The release stated that “Guyanese have nothing to learn from an institution whose parent body is a leading influence in global fascism.”
Similar criticisms were also levelled by the other groups.
Jagdeo said that the GHRA’s stance was tantamount to “crying crocodile tears”. He pointed out that the GHRA and all other bodies will have a chance to have their say. “When the debate takes place, it’s between the Guyanese who will decide what will finally be the amendments. It will be the Opposition and Government in the parliament that will pass the final law. And you will have a full-fledged debate,” he said.
