GECOM needs to be freed from clutches of PPP and PNC

Oct 25, 2022 News

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– GHRA says fundamental electoral reforms crucial, not amendments to RoPA

Kaieteur News – Guyana is currently juggling a fossilized economy with Stone Age politics and to addressing this situation, it requires fundamental electoral reforms, principally liberating the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) from PPP/PNC bi-partisan domination; creating a strong single seat constituency component and securing gender equality in the allocation of seats.

This is according to the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA). The rights body said while it commends the Minister of Governance, Gail Teixeira for engaging civil society in holding the current consultation on electoral reform, amending technicalities in the Representation of the Peoples Act (RoPA) is not the agenda the country needs.

“Amending RoPA suggests that the chaos surrounding Guyana’s 2020 election was something new, rather than the norm. It also conveniently casts APNU as the villain, drawing a veil over the extent to which both major parties are at one over resisting any change to their shared control of the electoral system – the cancerous heart of Guyana’s electoral dysfunction. While the major parties skirmish over the details of the RoPA, their track record is unanimous in frustrating fundamental reforms,” GHRA said.

The GHRA said it has accepted to attend the consultation “both because we believe that conflicts are better addressed by responding thoughtfully to causes rather than passionately to symptoms that allow no compromises. However, the test of the good faith of the Government with respect to electoral reform will be its willingness to allow implementation of approved reforms to the electoral system and the elimination of political parties from GECOM.”

According to the body, both major political parties have successfully resisted similar recommendations from a constellation of domestic and international bodies for more than two decades. ”The constitutional reform process of 2000 approved implementation of a single-seat constituency. The current allocation of 25 seats to the 10 Administrative Regions (known as the ’Reynolds reforms’) was intended to be an interim, one-off step for use in the 2001 elections with the full system, implemented in time for the 2006 election, that is, 40 individual seats and a National List of 25 seats.  In addition to strengthening accountability to voters, rather than the party leadership, those reforms also weaken the power of party leaders to function like tribal leaders, selecting and recalling Members of Parliament at will. However, nothing has been done by either party to this day to complete electoral reform, despite intense pressure, particularly between 2000 to 2006 including a Memorandum of Understanding signed jointly by the ABCE countries, the Presidential Secretariat and the then opposition PNC leadership.”

The GHRA said the Carter-Price formula whereby the Leader of the Opposition presents the President with a list of candidates suited to be Chair of the GECOM has never been approached with the national interest in mind by either party.  The GHRA said while neither party is free from criticism, the antics surrounding the appointment of the current GECOM Chair in 2019 were the most abusive manipulation of it. While recognizing the limitations of the Carter-Price formula, it nevertheless allows for huge improvement if political will, imagination and the national interest is available as the motivating feature of the exercise. The Leader of the Opposition could oversight a professional transparent selection process, engaging a wide cross-section of opinion, the results of which could then be presented to the President, rather than the current partisan scenario. This has never been attempted. The decade of the 2000 saw intensive civic activity from all sectors in Guyana – professionals, faith-based, trade union, indigenous and non-governmental bodies lobbying for implementation of the approved reforms. The Facing the Future (FtF) campaign of 2012, as one example, saw a conference of thirty such organizations elaborate around 100 specific recommendations grouped in 10 clusters.

In addition to domestic activism, GHRA said CARICOM can chart a long history of interventions to rescue Guyana from its electoral dysfunctionality. Since the 1970s, bi-lateral and multi-lateral interventions by CARICOM leaders have occurred seeking to influence every Prime Minister or President of Guyana from Forbes Burnham onwards.  They include Prime Ministers Eugenia Charles of Dominica, James Mitchell of St. Vincent, Kenny Anthony of St. Lucia (Herdmanston), Henry Forde (Barbados) and Alister McIntyre (CARICOM & Grenada). In addition to these initiatives, finalizing the 2020 elections required unprecedented Caribbean interventions from the Caribbean Court of Justice, the CARICOM re-count Team as well as the personal influence of former, Bruce Golding of Jamaica and former and current Prime Ministers of Barbados – Owen Arthur and Mia Mottley. This is to say nothing of the interventions by resident diplomats from Canada, UK, US and EU.

This constant national humiliation is a further consequence of Stone Age politics that needs to be addressed as a far more urgent priority than the technical details of the RoPA. A good place to start an electoral reform process in Guyana would be with the same CARICOM countries, all with Elections Commissions and election rules akin to ours. Yet we seem incapable of learning lessons. Moreover, none of them appear to spend the indefensible amount of money on elections, or unreported money on electioneering as we do in Guyana.

Tolerance for civil society and civic space is shrinking in Guyana, encouraged by Government Ministers taking freely to social media trolling organizations and individuals. Electoral discussion needs rescuing from such bi-partisan social media bullying.  However, the GHRA remains hopeful that the professional, faith-based, trade union, indigenous and NGOs which engaged in lively debate about electoral reform in the past will re-discover that vigour.

Consultations

Last week the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance announced that it will be convening a national stakeholders’ consultation on the draft amendments to Guyana’s electoral laws on Tuesday October 25, 2022, from 13:00hrs to 16:00hrs at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre in Georgetown, Guyana. This consultation is an integral element of the Government of Guyana’s commitment to implement a consultative, inclusive and participatory process regarding electoral reform, the ministry said in a statement.

According to the ministry, the stakeholder consultation forms part of a continuous consultative process which began on November 6, 2021 when the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance published the draft Representation of the People’s (Amendment) (ROPA) Bill and the draft Regulations made under the Representation of the People Act on its social media pages. The public was invited to peruse the draft documents and submit feedback to the Ministry within six weeks; however, after requests for extensions, the Ministry accommodated submissions of feedback well into 2022. Recommendations were received from a variety of stakeholders including civil society actors, the Guyana Elections Commission, some political parties, and other interested individuals and organisations. These recommendations were consolidated and provided to the Attorney General, who in May 2022, facilitated in-person meetings with the respondents.

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