Leader of the Opposition Aubrey Norton says the police have nothing to probe in relation to his statements on the Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), retired Justice Claudette Singh.
Last week, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance Gail Teixeira had called on the Guyana Police Force to investigate threats she alleged were made by Norton against Singh.
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 be removed or resign. The calls, according to Norton, mirror those 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.
When asked on Tuesday at a press conference whether he would comply with the Police if they launch an investigation, Norton said “The police has nothing to investigate…the police could be sued and if the police goes in the direction of following PPP on these kinds of activities, legal action will be taken against them. There is nothing to be investigated as it relates to my call for the Chairman of GECOM to go.”
He accused the government of using his calls to distract from the real problems in the country. He added that the government is trying to “spin” his calls to create an issue when it is really non-existent.
“What we as Guyanese have got to do is to note clearly [that] there is no threat in saying that the Chairman of GECOM votes every time with the PPP and therefore she does not bring the impartiality that is expected of a Chairman of the Elections Commission and therefore she should go. There is no threat in that.
“What it does is to point out that the Elections Commission is a constitutional body, it is expected that he or she or whoever chairs it will operate in an impartial way, will operate independently and she isn’t. Clearly what she is doing is going in whichever direction the People’s Progressive Party goes and therefore she is not fit to be Chairman of the Elections Commission. An elections commission chairman must be impartial,” Norton lamented.
Norton and his team have also been calling on Justice Singh and GECOM to ensure that there is a clean voters list before Guyana heads to the polls. He said that the recently released Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) contains 684,354 names which is over 91% of Guyana’s population and is proof that a clean voters list is needed before any election is held.
On Tuesday, he told reporters that the APNU+AFC is prepared to discuss and support constitutional and statutory amendments to facilitate a clean voters list and other measures aimed at ensuring credible elections. He added that the recent pronouncements by both the GECOM Chairperson and Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo gave the false impression that the election laws of the country are cast in stone and are forever unchangeable.
He pointed out that in 1990 then President Desmond Hoyte agreed to postpone elections to facilitate constitutional and other amendments which saw the enactment of the Carter-Price formula (as Article 161 of the constitution) and, for the first time, counting at the place of poll.
During the constitutional reform process in 1999/2000, Guyana’s electoral system saw additional reforms, such as the re-introduction of geographic constituencies.
“Even more, for the 2006 Regional and General Elections, GECOM introduced fingerprint biometrics when it commissioned the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) to conduct a fingerprint scanning and cross-matching exercise to detect multiple registration. These and other examples prove that the country has shown a willingness to undertake major electoral reforms when political and civil society stakeholders have deemed them necessary to deliver elections of acceptable standards. And these reforms have been of several types: constitutional, statutory, administrative/operational, and technological,” Norton said.
He stated that Guyana has reached another critical juncture for additional electoral reforms with a clean list being the priority.
“APNU+AFC hereby goes on record that we stand ready to discuss and support the necessary constitutional and other amendments to ensure a clean voters list as a necessary condition to ensure that the next elections are free, fair, and credible,” Norton said.
