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What else is Govt. telling GECOM to do?

Oct 19, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
Ever since the 1997 elections that ended with the president-to-be Janet Jagan throwing a legal court document over her shoulder, and the haste with which the then GECOM Chairman and soon-to-be Attorney General Mr. Doodnauth Singh, rushed to have that inauguration ceremony, it began to highlight the fact that GECOM was being compromised.
We are now 13 years past that very controversial election and we see the Government issuing a directive to GECOM on where they should place certain advertisements.
GECOM I thought was a body that operated independent of the Government. So you must understand my surprise and utter dismay, when I read that an internal matter like the placement of advertisements was being dictated to GECOM by the Government.
How could this be? Why is the Chairman of GECOM adhering to this directive? It leaves one to wonder if an internal issue like the placement of advertisements can be dictated by the Government, what else is Government telling GECOM to do?
The opposition and civil society should be vigorously protesting this interference in GECOM’s affairs by the Government. Guyanese cannot sit back and allow this kind of meddling to be done with GECOM and expect elections to be ‘free and fair’?
If in fact the Chairman of GECOM does accept and follow these instructions as to where he must place ads belonging to GECOM, then Guyanese can no longer have faith in the credibility of GECOM.
GECOM would have been compromised!
If these instructions are followed by the Chairman of GECOM, then GECOM itself should be dissolved and a new body formed that adequately reflects the impartiality and neutrality that an electoral governing organisation ought to possess. Guyana needs to have an electoral governing body that is truly autonomous and is allowed to function without the long fingers of the Government fiddling with its operations.
Until such an organisation exists, we might be sadly recognising that the cancer of rigged elections that once plagued this land is indeed malignant.
Richard Francois

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