GECOM’s hands tied in drawing of new constituencies for LGE

GECOM’s hands tied in drawing of new constituencies for LGE – Alexander

Aug 25, 2018 News

GECOM Commissioner, Vincent Alexander

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has to proceed with the exercise of redrawing boundaries to facilitate an increase in the Local Authority Areas (LAA) ahead of Local Government Elections (LGE) set for November 12th.
This is according to GECOM Commissioner, Vincent Alexander, who articulated that the change in the number of LAA is a prerogative of the Minister.
“It is not of GECOM. GECOM has to respond by reconstituting the constituencies. GECOM handles the establishment of constituencies; the Minster handles the establishment of local authority areas. The extension of local authority areas and the number of constituencies that there will be is not determined by GECOM. What GECOM does is, once the Minister determines the numbers, then GECOM has to go and come up with the actual constituencies,” Alexander explained.
Minister of Communities, Ronald Bulkan has defended his position on increasing the LAA from 71 in 2016 to 80 for the upcoming elections. This decision has drawn sharp criticisms from the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) who accused the Minister of gerrymandering boundaries to undermine the elections process.
Alexander addressed the argument by the PPP that they must be consulted by GECOM before the new boundaries are drawn.
“Having to consult them we have to equally consult the others, so you have to find in a sense, a neutral arbitrator, and that is a role that GECOM will have to play,” Alexander stated.
He explained that boundaries are being drawn up on natural boundaries, population, as well as interest groups.
Alexander reflected that it is not a straightforward matter, pointing out that constituencies historically have always been a political issue. He said this is the reason proportional representation (PR) was introduced in Guyana, but the PPP was against it, which is one of the things that triggered violence in Guyana.
Alexander noted that with PR, the PPP would have secured 50% of the seats with 40% of the votes.
“Constituencies have that disadvantage, because they are not necessarily numerically equal. Our system is a mixed system, so that you have constituencies and you have the PR as well, so it is not as flawed. Half of the seats are allocated based on PR and half are allocated through constituency. That is the system that we finally agreed to in the Local Government reform process,” Alexander noted.
Bulkan has been defending his decision as being legal, pointing out that the exercise of rebalancing the size of some councils was done pursuant to sections 5 and 12 of the Local Democratic Organs Act Chapter 28:09, which specifically states that the Minister may by Order provide for, among other things, the composition and constitution of each local democratic organ.
“Notwithstanding the soundness of this exercise in law, it was not done capriciously. This was a decision aimed at rationalising the size of councils vis-à-vis their responsibilities, and was duly guided by relevant considerations such as the demographics of these areas,” Bulkan said in a statement on Thursday.
He explained that there existed an anomaly, where the size of some Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs) is larger than some municipalities.
For instance, Bulkan noted that the 18 total seats on the Aberdeen/Zorg-en-Vlygt NDC is more than that of the second most populous and one of the larger geographical municipalities in the country – Linden, which has 16 seats.
“It should also be noted the size of the Linden Municipality was also reduced for the 2016 elections from 18 to where it is presently. Hence, the rebalancing of the size of council is clearly not novel,” Bulkan noted.

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