“I make my own decisions” – GECOM Chair on accusations of her siding with PPP

– says will resign when she is ready

Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), retired Justice Claudette Singh, has rubbished claims that she has been using her tie-breaking vote at the seven-member Commission to favour the Peoples Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government’s nominated Commissioners.
“Let me just say, there are three commissioners on each side. I have the casting voting… from the legislation. So, what do I do when they are tied? I have to cast the [tie-breaking] vote. I make up my own decision, it’s not that I’m voting with the PPP,” Justice Singh told reporters at a press conference on Friday.
The People’s National Congress (PNC)-led A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Opposition, which has three seats on the Elections Commission while the PPP has the other three, has been critical of the GECOM Chair, accusing her of being biased and always siding with the PPP Government’s nominated commissioners.
In fact, the Opposition has been regularly staging protests outside of GECOM on Tuesdays – the day that the Elections Commission have its weekly meeting – calling for the Chairwoman to resign.
However, Justice Singh declared that while persons have a democratic right to protest, she will determine when is the right time for her to step down. “Well, I don’t know about resigning. When I want to resign, I will resign,” the GECOM Chair posited during Friday’s press conference.

Following recent appointments to fill key senior positions at GECOM, the PNC/APNU Opposition issued a statement earlier this month, accusing Justice Singh of abandoning her constitutional responsibilities and reiterating calls for her to step down from the post.
“The recent appointments by GECOM of a Civic and Voter Education Manager and a Logistics Manager provide further evidence that Chairperson Claudette Singh remains a pawn of the PPP and has discarded all traces of self-respect, shame, and any willingness to fulfil her constitutional duty to the people of Guyana. These two positions were filled by persons who possess inferior qualifications and relevant experience compared to other applicants who were nevertheless rejected by the GECOM Chair acting in concert with the three PPP-nominated commissioners,” the opposition party stated in the missive.
In response to these allegations, Justice Singh went through the list of new appointees detailing her reasons for selecting not just those persons for the positions within the Elections Commission but other senior officials as well including the current Chief Elections Officer, Vishnu Persaud, and Deputy Chief Elections Officer, Aneal Giddings.
Only last week, the General Secretary of the ruling PPP/C, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, had defended the GECOM Chair against the Opposition’s accusations, which he says borders on attempts to bully Justice Singh.
“It’s not about supporting the PPP or APNU, it’s about what is right and what is constitutional. [Justice Singh] will follow the law; that’s how she is. She has done this all the time. And [now, they’re] trying to bully her like at the protest to get her out because you want in there, another Patterson… [who] agreed to do somethings unconstitutional… and then he had to be removed…,” Jagdeo noted.
The PPP General praised the GECOM Chair for remaining steadfast in not just upholding her constitutional duties but, more importantly, the integrity of the electoral process.
“You think Claudette Singh, as a respected former judge in this country, after the Chief Justice has ruled that you can’t remove people from the [voters] list and that is it constitutional, will go and remove people’s name from the list, or try through biometrics to disenfranchise them again?… You think she would act in an unconstitutional manner, she will not… Claudette Singh is voting for clean elections now and is standing up to any attempts to violate the law,” he added.
Moreover, Jagdeo had pointed to Justice Singh’s 2001 ruling as a High Court judge to vitiate the 1997 elections results, which terminated the PPP’s term in office. He reminded that PPP accepted that decision and did not accuse the judge of siding with the PNC at the time.
“It was Claudette Singh who ruled [the election] was unconstitutional and cut short the PPP’s term… They didn’t say [anything] about Claudette Singh at that time or we didn’t say that [she] was voting with [PNC] or she was a pro-PNC judge. We accepted the court ruling. We lost some period in Government and we went back to elections,” the PPP General Secretary recalled. (G-8)