When the new APNU/AFC Government took office two years ago, after securing a very slim majority at the polls, there was an amount of goodwill towards them, even from the outgoing People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Administration. But since then, despite their promises of ensuring clean, accountable, transparent and democratic governance, based on their policies and actions, they have deeply disappointed their supporters as well as the rest of the country, and have fritted away all the goodwill.
From day one, they have been moving from one gaucherie to another, and though both supporters and the Opposition had been trying to tell them to mend their ways, a thick cloud of insensitivity seemed to have enveloped the Government, and they have continued along the path of insensitive recalcitrance.
The most recent expression of such unbelievable recalcitrance is President David Granger’s unilateral appointment of the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM). It is clear that the framers of the Constitution, which produced the formula of the Opposition Leader putting forward the names of possible GECOM Chairmen and the President choosing from the Opposition list, had meant to provide involvement of the whole country utilising a truly democratic and fair process.
It should be mentioned that, after engaging in extensive consultations with the broad political and civil society, the Leader of the Opposition nominated eighteen distinguished Guyanese citizens in three lists for the top GECOM post. Those nominated were professionals, some of whom were high court judges, lawyers, business people, former Chief of Staff and Head of the Army, a former GECOM Chair, etc.
President Granger ignoring this basic democratic process is unbelievable, and has confirmed what many were saying before: that the President, from the inception, wanted to appoint someone with whom he was comfortable.
The President’s action is unbelievable for a number of good reasons. Firstly, by unilaterally appointing a Chairman of GECOM, the President is turning his back on the democratic procedures which the Western democracies worked so hard to establish after the Burnham dictatorship. This is ill omen reminiscent of a return to the dark days of suffering for the Guyanese population into which the Burnham authoritarianism enchained Guyana. The President certainly cannot be oblivious to the fact that the party he heads was responsible for blatantly rigging elections in 1968, 1973, 1980 and 1985.
Secondly, the unilateral appointment of the GECOM Chairman has done something which the population of Guyana regards as unfair. The people of Guyana, despite their various political postures, deep down believe in fairness; and President Granger’s unfair action is quietly rejected by APNU/AFC supporters and more loudly by others. Many had expressed the view that, from the start, the President knew who he was going to appoint to serve in the post.
Further, what makes President Granger’s actions more reprehensible in the eyes of the population is the contradictions of his own criteria he himself laid out regarding the appointment of the GECOM Chair. For example, Mr Granger has publicly stated that the GECOM Chairman must not have the taint of being politically partisan. However, the President’s appointee served as advisor to the Attorney General and in other governmental appointments. One could easily accuse the appointee of having more political affiliation (with APNU+AFC) than any one of the 18 candidates on the lists submitted by the Leader of the Opposition. Age aside, there are several other contradictions which we will not delve into here.
In essence, in the eyes of the majority of citizens, some of the eighteen persons nominated by the Opposition Leader have got more plusses than the President’s appointee, using Mr Granger’s criteria.
The GECOM Chair is by law not an arbitrary appointment, and nothing in the Constitution permits the President to make an appointment of the GECOM Chairman in his own deliberate judgment. The President’s decision to act unilaterally and independently of the submissions of the Opposition Leader is therefore very unfortunate. It is a decision for which history would judge him very harshly, as it is a dangerous path taken.
Already, this appointment has unnecessarily stirred up much disquiet in the country, and instead of bringing social peace and a better life for the population, it poses a threat to democracy and could lead to further social and economic instability.
