Although the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is yet to finalise a timeline and date for the holding of the overdue Local Government Elections, the Commission’s Secretariat has gone ahead with the advertisement of vacancies for polling day staff.
Local Government Elections were constitutionally due at the end of last year but GECOM was without a Chief Election Officer and could not have prepared to host the elections. As a result, the Chair, retired Justice Claudette Singh, wrote to the government informing of the situation but did commit to confirming a timeline after the appointment of a CEO.
“…the Commission is unable to have those elections held at this point in time. As you are aware the Commission is currently working to conclude the hiring process of the Chief Elections Officer and other senior management staff. Please be assured that as Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission, I will communicate with you on the timeline at which Local Government Elections could be held when the Chief Election Officer is hired,” Justice Singh’s letter to Attorney General Anil Nandlall had explain-ed.
GECOM’s former Public Relations Officer Vishnu Persaud has since filled that vacancy but no word on a plan has been communicated as yet.
At the beginning of June, the Commission’s Secretariat released a list of vacancies for “polling day staff for Local Government Elections.” The Com-mission is looking for Presiding Officers, Assistant Presiding Officers, Poll Clerks, Ballot Clerks/ Counting Assistants and Information Clerks.
All applications should be submitted to the Chief Election Officer no later than June 30, 2022.
Stabroek News understands that the Secretariat decided to go ahead with the advertisement for polling day staff to be prepared for whenever the Commission announces a date.
“The Commission is not making any progress concerning Local Government Elections and [they were] supposed to be held last year. As you know, the Secretariat was without any CEO and now we have one but nobody is considering the elections.
“We recently concluded the continuous registration cycle and now we decided to go ahead and hire temporary staff so we can start training them. We are hoping that this would nudge the Commission to decide on a date but really we just wanted to have the staff trained and be ready for when a date is announced,” a GECOM source told Stabroek News.
GECOM’s continuous registration cycle concluded on May 29, 2022.
The opposition has been contending that the national register is bloated and should be addressed before the hosting of another election.
The deferral of the polls interrupted the sequence of two consecutive Local Government Elections, which were held under the APNU+AFC administration. After winning the 2015 general elections, the APNU+AFC government held the polls in 2016, ending a two-decade hiatus that began under the former PPP/C governments. The elections were held again in 2018 and were due last year.
With its track record of not holding the polls, analysts say that the PPP/C government will come under close scrutiny to ensure that the polls are held as soon as possible.
Earlier this year, Minister of Local Government and Regional Development Nigel Dharamlall had said that the elections would be held by the end of 2022.
“We believe in democracy. We believe in people’s choices. We believe that for our country to continue to evolve, for development to come flowingly to our people, that we must have local government elections. We are going to have local government elections this year. We have budgeted billions of dollars for local government elections and we are going to have local government (elections) this year,” Dharamlall told the National Assembly during his contribution to the 2022 budget debate.
GECOM was allocated $4.1 billion in the 2022 budget.
