2 years after elections: GECOM remains deeply polarised – Gunraj

– says he’s worried about future of Commission

It is two years to the day when Guyanese went to the polls in what would become a five-month-long fight for democracy. Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Commissioner Sase Gunraj, who played an integral part during that fight, is now worried about the future of the Commission due to its deeply polarised atmosphere.
Guyana Times solicited a comment from Gunraj on the occasion of the two-year anniversary of the March 2 General and Regional Elections of 2020. And the Commissioner admitted that GECOM has not acted with the alacrity it should when it comes to issues like a voters’ list. This is considering the fact that Local Government Elections (LGE), originally scheduled to be held in 2021, have been pushed back to 2022.
He also admitted that the GECOM Commission is polarised. Besides Gunraj, the other People’s Progressive Party-nominated commissioners are Bibi Shadick and Manoj Narayan.
Meanwhile, the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change-nominated Commissioners are Charles Corbin, Vincent Alexander and Desmond Trotman. The APNU/AFC side of the Commission has a well-established record of walking out of meetings during discussions on critical matters, or not even showing up. This publication reported these occurrences last year, during discussions on filling important vacancies at GECOM.
According to Gunraj, he wonders about the future of the Commission.
“It is no secret that the Commission is now a fractured body. When I went to the Commission, you could expect meaningful discussion and agreement. Unfortunately, you cannot even expect meaningful discussions, much less agreements. And sometimes I wonder about the Commission’s future in light of some of the postures of the Commission,” he said.
When it comes to previous recommendations from international partners, that the configuration of GECOM Commission should be less “political”, Gunraj noted that while all the Commissioners were nominated by political parties, he has always made decisions that were grounded in principles and law.
Moreover, Gunraj was of the view that for such a role at GECOM, it would be difficult to find civil society persons who have no ties to any political party. Moreover, he gave the example of other Commissions against which accusations of political bias are made regardless of who is appointed.
“So, I don’t see any great value in changing the composition of the personnel. But it requires personnel in the Secretariat who want to work towards a proper functioning organisation. When you have persons who are on the Commission and who were silent when all of this was happening in 2020, you cannot expect any better,” he said.

It was announced days ago that GECOM has settled on March 7, 2022 to kick off continuous registration, a necessary process for updating the List of Electors and paving the way for the holding of LGE.
GECOM made the announcement on Tuesday, noting that the cycle of Continuous Registration will start on March 7 at all of GECOM’s permanent offices across the country. GECOM has 28 permanent registration
offices located in all of the ten administrative regions.
Over $750 million has been set aside in Budget 2022 for the preparation to be undertaken by GECOM for the hosting of LGE this year. This money is part of an overall $4.1 billion allocation to GECOM in Budget 2022, and was examined and approved by the National Assembly during its consideration of the 2022 Budget Estimates on Monday.

Included in the $783 million for LGE is a more-than-$300 million increase in “other goods and services purchased”, which jumped from $250.8 million in 2021 to $575.9 million in the 2022 budget.
LGE is constitutionally due every two years in Guyana, and were last held in 2018. However, given the fiasco that played out following the 2020 General and Regional Elections, the Local Government polls were deferred to 2021.
At the last LGE in November 2018, the then People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Opposition had secured 52 of the 80 Local Authority Areas (LAAs). This followed the holding of the LGE in 2016, during which the PPP/C also claimed the majority of the LAAs.
After the 2018 LGE, GECOM spent over a year trying to get ready for snap elections that should have been held within three months of the then APNU/AFC Government falling to a No-Confidence Motion in December 2018.
Those elections were finally held over a year, later on March 2, 2020, but were then followed by a tumultuous five-month electoral impasse.
The PPP’s win was eventually declared by GECOM on August 2, 2020, after local and international pressure.
In the aftermath of that tumultuous period, former Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield; his Deputy, Roxanne Myers, and Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo were booted from GECOM in August of 2021.
The embattled trio is currently before the courts facing a number of electoral fraud charges for their alleged attempts to sway the results of the March 2020 General and Regional Elections in favour of the then ruling APNU/AFC Government.