Amidst calls for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to identify a date for the constitutionally overdue Local Government Elections (LGE), Chief Election Officer Vishnu Persaud has said that the Secretariat is currently in preparation mode.
Retired Justice Claudette Singh currently chairs the Elections Commission with Sase Gunraj, Bibi Shadick and Manoj Narayan representing the ruling party’s interest, while Vincent Alexander, Desmond Trotman and Charles Corbin represent the interests of the opposition APNU+AFC.
The seven-person Commission meets every Tuesday but is yet to have an in-depth discussion and make a decision regarding the hosting of LGE.
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 wrote to the government informing them of the situation but did commit to confirming a timeline after the appointment of a CEO.
Persaud, GECOM’s former Public Relations Officer, has since filled that vacancy but no word on a plan for the polls has been communicated as yet.
It is more than seven months now since the Chair’s letter to government was dispatched and elections were postponed.
Yesterday, CEO Persaud told Stabroek News that the Secretariat remains in a state of perpetual readiness for when the Commission announces a date.
“At the Secretariat, I can tell you this much—that our activities at the Secretariat level are focused on making preparations for local government elections. Whenever a date is announced we will be ready. We are continuously working to train staff, hire polling day staff and putting other systems in place to remain in a state of readiness,” Persaud said.
At the beginning of June, the Commission’s Secretariat released a list of vacancies for “polling day staff for Local Government Elections.” The Commission is looking for Presiding Officers, Assistant Presiding Officers, Poll Clerks, Ballot Clerks/ Counting Assistants and Information Clerks. That process concluded at the end of June.
When asked where the Secretariat is in the hiring process, Persaud said “with specific reference to the ads I had out, I have completed training for management staff for local government elections. Management staff refers to the people who would be returning officers, deputy returning officers and clerks.”
He added “the applications for polling day staff, the end date for [submission of applications] was July 31st so we are in the process of inputting those applications so that we can sort them to be trained by local authority areas or trained with specific reference to local authority areas. Basically what that means is that we will be going out across the country to train people in the areas that they reside and when I say with specific reference to local authority areas, it’s that the intention would be to appoint people to work in the local authority areas that they live.”
He explained that the finalisation of the selections would be completed by the end of next week and training would commence almost immediately after.
“…It is all with a hope of being in a state of readiness to have local government elections at a date which might be proclaimed by the Minister of Local Government on the basis of advice received from the Commission,” he said.
Last week, Opposition Commissioner Vincent Alexander told Stabroek News that while the Commission has had no substantive discussions in relation to the local government polls, they are still behind a preset timeline.
“As you know there have been no in-depth conversations in regard to local government elections but we have had a timeline to hosting the elections at the end of the year but we are behind in that process. We can ideally catch up but whether we will meet the timeline is another issue.
“Right now we have recently completed the cross-matching process so that we have no duplications in the final register where we can extract the voter list when the time comes for election,” Alexander had said.
At this Tuesday’s meeting, Stabroek News was informed that LGE did not make the agenda again.
As it relates to the timeline, a GECOM source explained that there seems to be a refusal of both the government and opposition commissioners to proceed with setting a date. The source said that while the responsibility for announcing a date falls under the purview of the Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, it is the Commission that advises on its readiness.
Stabroek News understands that the CEO continually provides the Commission with updates. However, until the Commission identifies a date, the Secretariat cannot procure the relevant materials needed for the hosting of elections.
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.
In preparation for LGE, GECOM embarked on a continuous registration process back in March, particularly targeting new applicants. The continuous registration cycle concluded on May 29, 2022, with over 49,000 persons being registered for the first time. A total of 70,041 transactions were conducted during the period. 28,149 were new registrants between the ages of 14 and 17, while 21,130 were new registrants above the age of 18. Additionally, 4,629 persons applied for transfers, 6,526 persons changed or corrected their information, 7,667 applied for replacement identification cards and 1,940 registrants retook their ID photos.
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.
