PPP continues protest for Surujbally’s removal

General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Clement Rohee, led a protest in front of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) on Tuesday, with the aim of having the GECOM Chairman, Dr Steve Surujbally removed from office.

With placards calling for Surujbally’s dismissal, Rohee and his PPP/C followers walked in circles in front of GECOM chanting “Surujbally must go!” Speaking on behalf of the Party, Rohee, indicated that the protest is intended to bring about change, commencing with the removal of the Chairman of GECOM.

“We are here to achieve something strategic. That is, election reforms, for new changes to take place in terms of GECOM Chairman, the GECOM machinery and the whole question of free and fair elections,” Rohee voiced.

The General Secretary highlighted that the reason why these requests for changes are being posed is because they have lost confidence in GECOM and they have expectations that there will be accomplishments in terms of reforms, on a long-term basis.

Rohee added that the implementation of modernised “house to house” registrations, E-registrations, E-voting and E-tabulation towards tallying of election results, are some of the changes that they want to see implemented by GECOM. He posited that if the changes are not made, there are many plans and measures to be taken, besides “the regular picketing exercises”, pointing out that the Party has all intentions of continuing to rally, until these conditions are met.

“We’re not going to struggle only with picketing exercises, there are many other ways in which we can, based on our experiences that we have utilised to achieve our objective like marches, demonstrations, overseas representation, writing petitions, trying to influence the international community and so on. This is just part of a holistic approach to achieve these objectives,” the party General Secretary relayed.

Rohee voiced that there was a great amount of optimism towards being able to achieve the changes they are seeking from GECOM. He highlighted that since they (PPP/C) had protested and achieved change in 1992, it is not impossible for changes to be made again. “We’ve achieved the objectives in 1992 and we believe that we will be able to achieve the objectives in the same way that we would have achieved the objectives and electoral reforms in 1992.”