GECOM Chairman replacement... Exhaust all options at home before looking abroad - WPA

GECOM Chairman replacement… Exhaust all options at home before looking abroad – WPA

Jun 29, 2019 News

If it comes to that, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo has said that he is prepared to find a suitable nominee from one of the Commonwealth nations for the post of Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).
But the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) wants all local options to be exhausted first before the Opposition Leader, or even the President, David Granger, considers an individual from the Commonwealth.
In a missive that was issued to the press, the WPA said if the suggestion is embraced as a first resort, it would send the wrong message to Guyanese about leaders’ confidence in their ability to be impartial and just. “Ultimately, it is the will of the political leaders that is being tested,” the party asserted.
Furthermore, the WPA said it noted the apparent uncertainty over the procedure to be used in selecting a new chairperson of GECOM. The Party said it is critical for the deliberations by the parties to be guided by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ)’s apparent embrace of consensus as the preferred mode of behaviour. WPA has already opined that the CCJ seems inclined to have the two sides come to a consensus rather than the court becoming unnecessarily entangled in the country’s politics via the issuing of consequential orders.
It is therefore the party’s view that the court may be cognizant of the risk of over-reach that accompanies consequential orders. It said that courts generally have been very reluctant to issue such orders, given the risk of breaching the wall that separates the branches of government as part of the doctrine of separation of powers. It is against this background that WPA said it reads the CCJ’s advice in relation to the appointment of the GECOM chair.
The WPA said that its understanding is that the CCJ has proposed a modification of the current formula by requiring the two leaders to jointly participate in the compilation of a list of six nominees from which the President would eventually choose the chairperson in keeping with his constitutional mandate. WPA said it views this as a more acceptable approach since it greatly reduces, if not eliminates, the scope for unilateralism by both the president and the opposition leader.
But, the success of this approach it says, assumes good faith on the part of the leaders.
The WPA said, “It requires them to find ways to subordinate their hardcore partisan interests to the greater good of the country. This is ultimately the true test of statesmanship. WPA, therefore, again urges the leaders to rise to the occasion—there must be some degree of give-and-take. Failure to arrive at a consensus could further hold up the preparations for elections, heighten existing tensions or force the court to intervene in a manner that could be interpreted as judicial over-reach.”
For the WPA, another key to the workability of the formulae is avoidance of the temptation to “pack” the list with candidates that are overtly aligned to the political parties or are openly hostile to them. WPA said that this would be a non-starter. Although the WPA prefers the leaders to jointly agree to all six candidates, it said that it would have no objection to them each nominating three.

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