Get rid of compromised staff – PSC tells GECOM

…says election petitions no excuse for unpreparedness for LGE

With Local Government Elections (LGE) due next year, the Private Sector Commission (PSC) has urged the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to clean house of all its compromised staff and prepare to hold the elections when they are due.

PSC Chairman Nicholas Boyer

In a statement on Saturday, the PSC pointed out that even though elections were concluded and President Dr Irfaan Ali declared the winner since August, there has been no word from GECOM about its readiness for LGE.
Nor has GECOM said anything about the fate of the staff who were implicated in the five months of controversy that saw the former ruling A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) make desperate attempts to rig the elections.
“Senior officials of GECOM, including the Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield, and District 4 Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo, and a number of other officials assisting these officers and an Information Technology Officer, are charged before the courts with “misconduct in public office,” the PSC noted.
“Nevertheless, as far as we know, none of these officers have been dismissed from their employment with GECOM, nor have they been suspended from duty. It is unthinkable and certainly unacceptable that GECOM should proceed to conduct Local Government Elections while these officers remain employed and involved in the conducting of these elections.

GECOM Chair, Retired Justice Claudette Singh

The Commission questioned why GECOM Chair, Retired Justice Claudette Singh has gone quiet and the nation has not heard from the election agency on its readiness to hold LGE, even though President Ali has committed to holding it. If the silence is because of APNU/AFC’s election petition currently before the High Court, however, the PSC noted that this cannot be used as an excuse.
“It cannot be that the Chairman of GECOM is refusing to take action to clean up the Commission based on the excuse that the APNU/AFC have filed an election petition before the courts. Local Government Elections are likely to be due to be held long before the petition will be heard to finality.”
“The election petition cannot be used as a means of delaying or postponing GECOM’s preparedness to hold an election. Our country, since 2nd August, 2020, has already begun to progress and prosper from the political stability in place and the obvious progress being made from a whole host of new development expenditure, private and public, immediately on the horizon in spite of the continuing challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The PSC described it as a “hugely regressive” step, if GECOM’s failure to properly prepare for LGE when they become due, result in Guyana coming under the threat of further political instability.
“The Private Sector Commission, therefore, wishes to urge upon the Chairman of the Elections Commission to speak out and speak plainly about the action being taken to put right all that has gone wrong in GECOM and to do it quickly,” the PSC said.

Confidence
President Ali has also spoken of the need for confidence to be restored in GECOM before proceeding with any other elections, especially in light of the events that unfolded in the five months after the March polls, which saw Guyana being embroiled in a political and electoral crisis.
“I’ve received letters from many stakeholders in our country. And they all told me that they do not want to go back to the process they went through in those five months. And that is of uttermost importance in the minds of our people. And that is what we have to address,” President Ali had said when asked about LGE at a previous event.
But APNU/AFC, now in Opposition, has been adamant that LGE should be held next year with the current lot of officials at GECOM still on the job. Several of them are, however, currently before the courts facing electoral fraud charges in relation to attempts to derail the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections.
At the last Local Government Elections in November 2018, the then PPP/C Opposition secured 52 of the 80 Local Authority Areas (LAAs). While PPP/C got 61 per cent of the votes, the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and Alliance for Change (AFC) – which contested the Local Government polls separately – obtained a mere 34 and 4 per cent of the votes, respectively.
This followed the holding of 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 A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance for Change (APNU/AFC) Government falling to a No-Confidence Motion in December 2018.
GECOM finally held General and Regional Elections on March 2, 2020. But as if the previous delays were not enough, Guyanese were forced to wait another five months before the results could finally be declared by GECOM on August 2, 2020, after local and international pressure.
Following the controversial five-month-long elections, a number of high-ranking GECOM officials have been investigated by the Police and charged for misconduct in public office and forgery. In addition to Lowenfield and Deputy Chief Election Officer (DCEO) Roxanne Myers, embattled Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo is also before the courts on electoral fraud charges. (G3)