GECOM has become the President’s trump card and lifeline

Dear Editor,
The APNU/AFC coalition regime has not reached the stage of doctrinal dictatorship yet, at least when compared to the post-independence period from 1968 to 1992, the genealogical heart of the PNC. There seems to be little indication that this will happen given the successful No-Confidence Motion (NCM) inflicted upon it on December 21, 2018.
However, the regime’s grid of supervision and surveillance over Guyana’s affairs has dwindled, conceding some power to the opposition, PPP.
What has happened since the NCM is that the regime has operated on the “logic” of restraint not onto itself but to the private-oriented institutions and the opposition while applying a tight confluence between sister-affiliated institutions in and out of Guyana.
In every nodal point of challenge, the regime is relying desperately on the Office of the Attorney General and GECOM, its twin horns, to reconfigure the basic meaning of the Constitution, mathematics, among others, under the rubric of “situational necessity” or something like that, in the courts.
The minutiae of bunkums – 34 is the majority of 65, the Constitution is wrong, GECOM is not ready – has been transmogrified into full-blown national and regional comedies. Some in the APNU/AFC regime have lampooned themselves in Guyana’s new encyclopedia of who’s who in constitutional semantics while some rue. It is sad to watch the entanglements of the once boastful and buzzed APNU/AFC coalition.
Despite threats of imminent doom, the regime has refused to acquiesce to any demands constitutionally placed on it, opting to maintain the spirit of grasping for power rather than upholding the letter of the law.
This stable and stubborn position has called in the entire edifice of the regime’s sincerity of good governance into question. What the hell do you mean by good governance? What the hell are your intentions? What is needed now is bureaucratic discretion, not bureaucratic donkeyism.
Noticeably, too, is that GECOM, like the regime, has begun to operate on the “logic” of restraint within the Commission rather than on the “logic” of facilitation as mandated. If you have not noticed, the self-styled, no paladin Chairman for anyone has voted according to the expectation of the regime: a delay of the general election until GECOM is ready.
Expect more voting to occur along these lines since no way in the world is GECOM an independent institution, never was, never will be, unless there is some sort of reform. There are now four APNU/AFC and three PPP members respectively.
The latter is simply decorative, an empty shell. To declare that the Chairman of GCEOM is an independent thinker would be promoting ignorance and engaging a habit of exaggeration. The outcome of the recent meeting between teams Granger and Jagdeo tells it all.
Am I supposed to believe these declared sentiments by the President of Guyana: “Let me make one thing clear, GECOM is an autonomous, GECOM is an independent agency and there is no part of the Constitution which gives the President or the executive in general, authority to interfere, intervene or intrude in the work of the elections commission”.
The unilateral appointment of GECOM’s Chairman by the President against the wishes of the majority fills those vital lacunae and punctuates the morphology of thinking within this regime. We will settle for nothing less but to stay in power. The Chairman of GECOM has become the President’s trump card and lifeline of the APNU/AFC regime.

Sincerely,
Lomarsh Roopnarine