Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance Gail Teixeira has called on the Guyana Police Force to “investigate threats” allegedly made by Leader of the Opposition Aubrey Norton against Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) retired Justice Claudette Singh.
In a press statement on Friday, accompanied by a series of excerpts from various news articles of the APNU+AFC calling for the removal of Singh, Teixeira said that “these threats and verbal attacks expose a sinister plot to bully and intimidate a former Judge and the Chairperson of a constitutional body, the Guyana Elections Commission, one of the highest in the land which is established to protect the right of the Guyanese people to vote for a government of their choice in freely and fairly managed elections.”
The Opposition has been contending that the GECOM Chair is biased in her conduct and has a record of consistently adjudicating matters in favour of the government. This has led to several calls for the Chair to resign.
“…We do not see elections being held with a bloated list and with Claudette Singh as Chairman and there are many things we can do to put the pressure on the elections commission and Claudette Singh but we have first given her the opportunity to tender her resignation, as a decent judge would have served…[she] cannot claim to be independent and on every issue you’re voting with the People’s Progressive Party…so we have left the door open and we hope we don’t have to close it and Claudette Singh will do the decent thing and resign,” Norton had said at one of his weekly press conferences earlier this month.
The calls, according to Norton, mirror that of the PPP in 2015 when they were calling for former GECOM Chair Dr Steve Surujbally to be removed from his post following its defeat at the polls.
Teixeira on Friday labelled Norton’s statements as reckless and called for the police to launch an investigation. She also called on civil society and women’s rights organizations to condemn Norton’s calls for the GECOM Chair’s resignation. “I shall also be formally writing the diplomatic and international community with regards to the targeting and threats to Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh, Chair-person of the Guyana Elections Commission, and Norton’s dastardly plot to undermine GECOM and the electoral system in Guyana,” Teixeira said in her statement.
