Revamp the electoral laws

Sep 12, 2015 Editorial

Over time the Guyana Elections Commission has been the source of criticism and even ridicule through no fault of its own. Prior to 1992 the Elections Commission was the creation of the government. There was a Chief Elections Officer selected by the government and a Commission that comprised two other staff members.
The law gave the Chief Elections Officer power over the elections and his declarations were final. That had been the case over the years until the People’s Progressive Party convinced the international community that the system was being abused by the government in place.
Changing the Commission saw the life of the then government extended by a further two years until the Commission was reorganized. Laws had to be passed that allowed for the modified Elections Commission. Then there had to be modifications to the system that saw the preparation of the voters’ list.
The modified law governing the Guyana Elections Commission saw the appointment of one Commissioner by the government, and one by the opposition. The Chairman who would be elected by the President held the casting vote. There were to be further modifications to the composition of the Guyana Elections Commission. It became an expanded body.
Despite these measures to eradicate problems with the Commission and the final vote, there has not been an election without some confusion. One is forced to conclude that elections in Guyana are recipes for confusion.
In 1992, the Guyana Elections Commission produced a Final Voters’ List that saw the disenfranchisement of thousands of people. By some stroke on ingenuity, the Commission produced one list that contained the names of the voters and another from which certain names were deleted. The result was that people saw their names on a list outside the polling station, but the names were absent from the list in the hands of the Presiding Officers.
The 1997 elections saw more confusion. The new President was sworn in surreptitiously, the first and only time there has been such a swearing in. The Elections Commission was complicit in that swearing in.
There were other cases of the Elections Commission acting in the interest of the government. It produced identification cards that were supposed to minimize multiple voting. Instead, one found that it accommodated multiple registrations and consequently, multiple voting. Again, supporters of the political opposition felt cheated.
The first time that there was no election trouble was in 2006. By then the Guyana Elections Commission was an independent authority free from direction by the politician. Yet there was the suspicion that the Chairman was open to dictation by the politicians. Since then the nation’s confidence in the Elections Commission grew.
But there has always been the problem of a timely declaration of the elections results. Guyana with a population of fewer than a million people has never been able to deliver its elections results in a day. At one time it took two weeks for the results to be declared. More recently, the nation is lucky that the results could be had within five days.
Trinidad and Tobago recently produced its elections results within five hours of the closing of the polls. Some twelve hours later the new Prime Minister was sworn in. Jamaica and Barbados are not far behind. To the credit of the political parties, despite the topography, the elections results were known within ten hours. Declaration was another matter.
The international community knows what the problem is and they have been making recommendations to correct this situation that leads to delayed poll results. However, it would seem that our politicians over the past two decades have not been keen to facilitate the changes in the law. It is now left to the present administration to make the changes that would bring Guyana in line with the rest of the democratic world when it comes to elections results.
For sure, early declaration would see a reduction in electoral tension. The spontaneous reaction of the people when the preliminary results were declared after May 11, 2015 has not escaped notice. Neither did the tension that followed the preliminary declaration and the final declaration.

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