Anand Goolsarran

Last week, the Government announced the appointment of eight new Permanent Secretaries.

More than 100 wildfires continue to rage in the states of California, Oregon and Portland, causing deaths to at least 35 people, massive destruction to property and displacement of thousands of residents.

On 30 September 2019, the Auditor General presented to the Speaker of the National Assembly his report on the audit of the public accounts for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2018.

After 15 months, the National Assembly met last Tuesday for the first time under the new Administration.

Some 28 trillion tonnes of ice have disappeared from Earth’s surface since 1994, according to researchers from Edinburgh University, University of Leeds and University College London.

In last week’s article, we referred to the urgent need to convene Parliament in order to set the legislative agenda for the rest of the year, including the presentation and approval of the budget for 2020.

I have been around in this business for 25 years and I have never seen a post-elections process like I have seen here in those 25 years, anywhere…[W]e saw things, with our own eyes, which were clearly not credible and clearly not right.

A huge section of the Milne Ice Shelf, the last of Canada’s intact ice shelves located on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, has collapsed into the Arctic Ocean, creating an “ice island” about 30 square miles in size, larger than that of the area of Manhattan.

The Granger administration and its allies continue to defy the will of the Guyanese people by refusing to accept the vote count.

In democracy, leaders step aside when they are voted out of office.

The Chair of the Elections Commission had written to the Chief Election Officer (CEO) requesting him to submit a report ‘using the valid votes counted in the National Recount as per Certificates of Recount generated therefrom’.

Now Guyana must return to its state of respect for the established will of the people; and the new Government must be declared and installed.

We must ask – on what grounds and by what form of executive fiat does the Chief Elections Officer determine that he should invalidate 1 vote, far less over 115 000 votes when the votes were already certified as valid by officers of the Guyana Elections Commission in the presence of the political parties.

The Commonwealth Charter recognises the inalienable right of individuals to participate in democratic processes, in particular through free and fair elections in shaping the society in which they live and for this right to be protected and respected.

It is respectfully submitted that such a chal lenge cannot be entertained at this time on the                 basis that it is premature. Any

Since the recount of the votes for the 2 March 2020 general and regional elections commenced on 6 May, we have been tracking developments on a weekly basis as the exercise progressed.

As this process concludes, it is important for all stakeholders to uphold the integrity of the process and peacefully accept the wishes of the Guyanese population.

Yet there is also cause for alarm [relating to the COVID-19 pandemic].

The U.S. Treasury Department last Friday imposed sanctions against the head of the Nicaraguan army and the country’s finance minister because of the Ortega regime’s increasing tendency towards authoritarianism and more specifically its ‘continued violations of basic human rights, blatant corruption, and widespread violence against the Nicaraguan people’.

What has transpired in this sister Caricom country since the March 2, 2020 election has basically been a circus, and it is indeed a shame that up to this stage a credible count of the votes has not been completed.