Elections are one of the crucial institutions to ensure the existence – not to mention the functioning — of democracy. Guyanese know this (or should know this) to their cost, since our country was actually birthed through electoral “fiddling” by the British when independence was in sight. The winner of the 1961 elections was supposed to lead an independent Guyana, but when the PPP fulfilled that condition, with pressure from the then US administration of JF Kennedy, the British changed the electoral system to ensure a coalition between the PNC and UF acceded to power.
Thus while all accept democracy is “rule by the people”, the method for choosing the representatives of “the people” has continued to pose a challenge to Guyana. The PNC’s blatant rigging of elections in 1968, 1973, 1978 (a referendum), 1980 and 1985 through various subterfuges, as verified by a plethora of international institutions and governments, alerted Guyanese to the importance of controlling the electoral mechanism, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).
The return of “free and fair” elections in 1992 was necessarily accompanied by changes in the composition of that body; its selection and its powers to oversee the elections process; the conduct of elections, and the counting of the ballots. While both the PPP and PNC questioned several aspects of the operations; during the next 23 years, while the PPP remained in office, by and large, the process worked.
With the change of Government in 2015, by the PNC as “APNU”, and in coalition with the AFC, however, a series of manoeuvres were immediately unleashed by the Government, led by President David Granger, to “game” the operations of GECOM. First there was a long and acrimonious debate between him, the Opposition and the Judiciary on the interpretation of the clause “…a judge or any other fit person”, specifically inserted in 1992 to select the Chairman of GECOM. Obdurately refusing to accept the Chief Justice’s ruling that the person does not have to be a Judge, Granger unilaterally appointed ex-Justice James Patterson to the position, which has a casting vote in the Commission’s decisions. Since then, Patterson has consistently voted, when the occasion arose, with the Government’s Commissioners against the PPP’s, such as for the Deputy Chairman of GECOM.
The second move concerned the composition of the staff of the GECOM Secretariat, which actually executes the operations of the Commission. One PPP commissioner claimed that the staff was overwhelmingly African Guyanese, which was due to skewed hiring practices; and this condition undermined the confidence of the Guyanese voters in the necessary impartiality of the institution. Granger’s hand-picked Chairman immediately vouchsafed that the staff was chosen on the basis of “merit,” without any investigation. The matter has since been filed with the Ethnic Relations Commission.
The scheduled Local Government Elections (LGE) in November has raised several other concerns about the fairness of the electoral process, especially since the LGE is widely seen as a precursor to national elections in 2020. First was the Ministry of Communities, under which the Local Government fall, of creating a new township and “gerrymandering” the boundaries of several constituencies to reduce PPP seats in some NDCs, while simultaneously increasing the latter’s number by eight and LAAs from 71 to 80. This matter is also now before the courts.
Finally, we have the critical matter of the procedure for nominating local Councillors by the participating entities in the LGE. This was severely compromised, with the AFC being accused by the PPP of using the names of dead individuals; forging the signatures of some, and tricking others to be “backers” of candidates. But more alarmingly has been the refusal of some Returning Officers (RO) to remove the names of candidates lacking the requisite number of backers, and the subsequent sequestering by the Chief Elections Officer (CEO) so as not to instruct those ROs to perform their duties.
All of this is depressingly reminiscent of previous electoral shenanigans, and raise serious concerns about the integrity of the LGE and the 2020 General Elections.
