The Guyana Human Rights Association [GHRA] is insisting that Guyana requires fundamental electoral reforms, principally liberating the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) from PPP/PNC bi-partisan domination rather than amending the technicalities in the Representation of the Peoples Act (RoPA) which GHRA claims is not the agenda that Guyana currently needs.
In a press release, the human rights body commended the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs & Governance Gail Teixeira for engaging civil society in holding the current consultation on electoral reform, but was however critical that “amending RoPA suggests that the chaos [that] surrounded Guyana’s 2020 election was something new, rather than the norm”. The human rights body noted that the Carter-Price formula, whereby the Leader of the Opposition presents the President with a list of candidates suited to be Chair of the GECOM, has never been approached with the national interest in mind by either party. While neither party is free from criticism, the antics surrounding the appointment of the current GECOM Chair in 2019 were the most abusive manipulation of it, the release adds.
The release posits that the RoPA consultations conveniently casts APNU as the villain, drawing a veil over the extent to which both major parties are at one over resisting any change to their shared control of the electoral system – the cancerous heart of Guyana’s electoral dysfunction. “While the major parties skirmish over the details of the RoPA, their track record is unanimous in frustrating fundamental reforms”, the GHRA release said. Guyana is currently juggling a strong single seat constituency component and securing gender equality in the allocation of seats. Both major political parties have successfully resisted similar recommendations from a constellation of domestic and international bodies for more than two decades.
While recognising the limitations of the Carter-Price formula, GHRA says that that formula allows for huge improvement if political will, imagination and the national interest is available as the motivating feature of the exercise. GHRA says that the test of the good faith of the Government with respect to electoral reform will be its willingness to allow implementation of approved reforms to the electoral system and the elimination of political parties from GECOM. The release suggested a recommendation where the Leader of the Opposition could oversee a professional transparent selection process, engaging a wide cross-section of opinion, the results of which could then be presented to the President, rather than the current partisan scenario. This has never been attempted.
According to the release, the constitutional reform process of 2000 approved implementation of a single-seat constituency. The current allocation of 25 seats to the 10 Administrative Regions (known as the ’Reynolds reforms’) was intended to be an interim, one-off step for use in the 2001 elections with the full system, implemented in time for the 2006 election, that is, 40 individual seats and a National List of 25 seats. In addition to strengthening accountability to voters, rather than the party leadership, GHRA says those reforms weakened the power of party leaders to function like tribal leaders by selecting and recalling Members of Parliament at will.
However, the release reminded, nothing was done by either party to this day to complete electoral reforms, despite intense pressure, particularly between 2000 to 2006, including a Memorandum of Understanding signed jointly by the ABCE countries, the Presidential Secretariat and the then opposition PNC leadership. A good place to start an electoral reform process in Guyana, the release implies, would be with the CARICOM countries, whom the GHRA says all have Elections Commissions and election rules akin to ours. The release adds that in addition to domestic activism, ‘CARICOM can chart a long history of interventions to rescue Guyana from its electoral dysfunctionality’. Since the 1970s bi-lateral and multi-lateral interventions by CARICOM leaders have occurred seeking to influence every Prime Minister or President of Guyana from Forbes Burnham onwards.
They include Prime Ministers Eugenia Charles of Dominica, James Mitchell of St. Vincent, Kenny Anthony of St. Lucia (Herdmanston), Henry Forde (Barbados) and Alister McIntyre (CARICOM & Grenada). In addition to these initiatives, finalizing the 2020 elections required unprecedented Caribbean interventions from the Caribbean Court of Justice, the CARICOM re-count Team as well as the personal influence of former, Bruce Golding of Jamaica and former and current Prime Ministers of Barbados – Owen Arthur and Mia Motley. This is to say nothing of the interventions by resident diplomats from Canada, UK, US and EU. Labeling the parties’ approach to electoral reforms as a ‘constant national humiliation’, the release suggested that it is Guyana’s Stone Age politics that needs to be addressed, ‘as a far more urgent priority’ than the technical details of the RoPA.
GHRA noted that the decade of the 2000s saw intensive civic activity from all sectors in Guyana – professionals,
faith-based, trade union, indigenous and non-governmental bodies lobbying for implementation of the approved reforms. The Facing the Future (FtF) campaign of 2012, as one example, saw a conference of thirty such organizations elaborate around 100 specific recommendations grouped in 10 clusters. The release also commented on government’s tolerance for civil society, saying that civic space is shrinking in Guyana, encouraged by Government Ministers taking freely to social media trolling organizations and individuals. Electoral discussion needs rescuing from such bi-partisan social media bullying, says GHRA. The release stated that GHRA did accept the invitation to attend the RoPA consultation, both because it believed that conflicts are better addressed by responding thoughtfully to causes, rather than passionately to symptoms that allow no compromises.
