GECOM Opposition Commissioners stonewall endless, futilely, the work of the Commission

Feb 04, 2023 Letters

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Dear Editor,

My attention was drawn to a letter published in the name of Vincent Alexander in the February 1st ‘23 edition of S/N headlined: “GECOM has decided demarcation report meets standard required despite evidence to the contrary.”

Please allow me to provide readers with a fuller picture of the matter raised by Mr. Alexander.

At a recent statutory meeting of GECOM, after weeks of hemming and hawing by Opposition commissioners, chairman Justice Claudette Singh ruled that a Report on the conduct of a field exercise for the reconfiguration of constituencies with reference to Order No. 39 of 2022 presented by GECOM CEO Vishnu Persaud, and in preparation for Local Government Elections, be adopted and implemented. Opposition commissioners objected vehemently to the chairman’s decision.

Consequent upon the completion of the field exercise conducted by senior GECOM staff members, PPP/C scrutineers along with a sprinkling from of APNU+AFC, the CEO submitted his report on the exercise to the Commission. The CEO subsequently submitted a memo in which he rebuffed attempts by Opposition commissioners who, in criticizing the report, claimed that the CEO did not use ‘approved criteria’ for the demarcation of constituencies.

In his memo, the CEO stated that he had fact-checked the claim about ‘approved criteria’ by perusing minutes of previous GECOM meetings and found no record of the Commission approving any such criteria. Furthermore, and much to Mr. Alexander’s chagrin, the CEO reported that no Commission ‘approved criteria’ were applied in the demarcation of constituencies in preparation for the conduct of Local Government Elections in 2018 under the APNU+AFC.

In another attempt to sway the Commission his way, Mr. Alexander sought to disparage the CEO’s report claiming that it did not meet the ‘standards required’. He continued badgering the Commission with his unsubstantiated claim that sometime in 2009, GECOM used criteria for the demarcation of constituency boundaries. Again, research by the CEO revealed, that contrary to Alexander’s claim, no evidence in any minutes of previous GECOM Meetings, nor any report from the then CEO showed that any exercise, as the one done by the current CEO, was executed for the 2018 elections under the APNU+AFC. It is to be recalled that through the actions of the then Minister of Communities, reconfiguration of constituencies occurred without any reference to criteria or standards. So much for Mr. Alexander’s ‘standards required.’

Notwithstanding several rounds of discussion and convincing arguments advanced by the three government-sponsored commissioners, Opposition commissioners carried on totally oblivious to their seemingly endless and unsatisfying arguments. In the end, the Opposition commissioners’ constant harping on criteria, ended up being a total waste of our time trying to extinguish the negative bias and the clueless nature of opposition commissioners who, from all appearances, clearly lost their way in their efforts to navigate passage though constitutional matters, local government laws and best practices of good governance. The hot pursuit with which the Opposition commissioners pursued their flawed, but transparent, agenda was baffling, to say the least. Contrary to their efforts, they were unable to cite authoritative sources, decisions adopted by the Commission, or to provide systematic data to disapprove the CEO’s report, much less to offer any evidence to prove the chairman wrong.

As if thrashing around for something to clutch to, Mr. Alexander sought to have the Commission accept his view that since there is mention of “approved principles” in Commission records, that this should be interpreted to mean ‘approved criteria.’ The Chairman specifically asked Mr. Alexander whether he could point to any record that will confirm that the Commission gave its approval to ‘approved criteria. He admitted that he could not. The Opposition commissioners stubbornly refused to wrap their minds around the logical and reasoned case presented in the CEO’s report. Blithely, they continued to toot their tiny local government horn without recognizing that no one will hear anything because the sound was out of sync with local government laws and regulations, as well as the basic tenets of democracy and good governance.

Alexander went so far as to claim that the CEO’s report represents what the Minister of Local Government ‘illicitly’ sought to foist on the Commission and that with the chairman’s ruling GECOM has now clothed the Minister’s ‘illicit act’ with its approval. Another figment of his imagination. Not satisfied over the rejection of his false claims about ‘approved criteria’, ‘standards required’ ‘process’ and ‘approved principles’ Alexander then shifted the goal post to ‘points of reference.’ He proceeded to make the spurious claim that (geography, community and population) previously developed and used by GECOM for the demarcation of constituencies were ‘thrown out’ by the chairman and the government-sponsored commissioners.

Mr. Alexander’s claim that ‘the Commission threw out collectively determined criteria and procedures, and accepted the validity of a report that resulted from a process that was crafted by the CEO, deficient and never approved by the Commission’ lacks appreciation of the reality. He failed to take into account that, in the absence of any reference point relative to the application of predetermined criteria, the CEO could not formulate an abstract notion regarding ‘Community Interests’ to which the Registration Officers who ‘walked the ground’, could have taken into consideration.

Following her ruling in support of the CEO’s report and her call for its implementation, there were emotional outbursts and expressions of outrage by opposition commissioners who, soon after, as if licking their wounds, rushed to the press to air their grievances over the decision. Since my appointment to GECOM, it has become a norm to hear at statutory meetings the gloom and doom fixations and narratives by opposition commissioners who behave as though they know everything, and no one else knows nothing!

To unplug from the grid of free and fair elections has proven to be relatively easy for the political opposition and their commissioners, but to plug into the grid of democratic electoral practices continues to be a bugbear at all levels. Recognizing that he had reached the nadir of his argument and having rejected the chairman’s ruling, Mr. Alexander declared that he will provide ‘statistical evidence’ to show that the boundaries proposed by the Minister of Local Government are ‘acts of gerrymandering aimed at giving the PPP an unfair advantage in the upcoming Local Government Elections’. Ironically, Mr. Alexander failed to recognize the duplicitous nature of his offer since the gerrymandering allegations he now claims, is precisely what his party did when it ransacked the local government laws and regulations, bending them to their whims and fancies in preparation for the 2018 Local Government Elections.

As regards his promise to provide ‘statistical evidence’ Mr. Alexander should be reminded of what Mark Twain attributed to Benjamin Disraeli about statistics and that they rarely show what they seem. Correcting a wrong that was done under the APNU+AFC which changed the boundaries of a number of constituencies in 2018 and with the Ali administration now returning them to what they were prior to being changed, can never be deemed as gerrymandering as Mr. Alexander so unjustifiable claims.

The Government appointed commissioners have made it clear that it will be considered a superfluous exercise were the commission to engage in any further discussion on a report that has already been approved for implementation and which Opposition commissioners deem as flawed and of no use. And though they didn’t say it, the Opposition commissioners’ position is that the report be scrapped, and the exercise be done over in its entirety. Consistent with their methodology of engaging in delaying tactics, we know that Mr. Alexander and company will use every opportunity to introduce new obstacles aimed at stymieing the successful holding of Local Government Elections in 2023.

Grumpily, the Opposition commissioners refuse to recognize and accept that things are rapidly changing in Guyana for the better, not for the worse. Grudgingly, they know life in Guyana is not like it was under the APNU+AFC, in the circumstances they spend much of their time trying to shore up their house built on sand.

Yours faithfully,

Clement J. Rohee

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• APNU+AFC, Clement J. Rohee, Commission, GECOM, Justice Claudette Singh

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