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SHATTERED IMAGE
The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is a permanent organization that morphed into its present state in May 2000 by virtue of the Constitution Act No2 of 2000. It replaced the Elections Commission which had a limited life that would normally expire three months after the date of General Elections.
GECOM is an independent body that is headed by a Chairman and Commissioners from the main political parties represented in the National Assembly. The Chairman is appointed by the President.
Its primary responsibility is to conduct and supervise elections in Guyana. There is no time limit or a period that commissioners are to serve. In other words, its Chairman and six Commissioners have life time appointments. All the powers which were previously exercised by the Minister responsible for the preparation for and administration of elections are now vested in GECOM.
Except for the 2015 general elections which the PPP claimed was rigged and has challenged the validity of results in court, the elections of 2001, 2006 and 2011 apparently were conducted fairly by GECOM, which had an unblemished record. It has often been praised by many for its proper handling of elections.
However, recently, GECOM has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. It has been accused of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on some questionable items. Not only is GECOM’s image being shattered, it seems to have lost credibility from the public.
GECOM is an independent body that has been granted some degree of autonomy on budgeting, and spending but only from this year. It is responsible for making decisions including identifying and purchasing equipment it deemed necessary for its operations. It is now a Constitutional body empowered to take care of its own budget and approve its expenditure. Neither the Minister of Finance nor the cabinet has authority over GECOM’s spending or its procurement of items.
But the sins that GECOM allegedly committed occurred before it had its own budget, when Cabinet approved all requisitions; when the Tender Board regulated the tenders and when Ministry of Finance made the expenditures.
However, the fact that GECOM spent $14.8 million for the purchase of pliers, $99.5 million on high frequency radio sets, and tens of millions for the purchase of batteries, copiers, printers, toners, batteries and office equipment should have raised a red flag, but it did not. It turned out that the cost of one plier was $6000 which was 10 times higher than a similar pair of pliers that cost about $600. The claim by GECOM that the radio sets were urgently needed for the May 11, 2015 elections, were false, because they were never used for the elections. Had it not been for this publication which exposed the reckless spending of public funds by GECOM, it would not have caught the attention of the Auditor General’s office.
Awarding the contract of the pliers to Standard Distributors which is owned by Mr. Mahendra Brasse was not only suspicious but was also problematic. The reason is that Mahendra Brasse is the brother of Michael Brasse whose company Mobile Authority was awarded a huge contract to supply GECOM with requisitioned articles.
Considered a favored contractor for GECOM, or who requisitioned for GECOM, the contract seems suspicious. It is being audited by the Auditor General’s office.
GECOM, had it been a self-financing agency, would have been accused of intentionally keeping many of its payments below a certain amount to avoid attracting attention from oversight bodies like the Procurement and Administration Tender Board.
Even though the Chairman of GECOM and its senior staff have not responded to the allegations of corruption, the revelations continue to unravel the foundation of GECOM which until now has been seen by many as one of the most respectable organizations in the country.
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