Dear Editor
NOT so long ago, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) had been accused of employing staff along racial lines. Scurrilous in content, with the intention to undermine the important functions of this most important of state constitutional bodies, such an accusation, without foundation, had been designed to incite national disaffection, thus bringing the institution into disrepute.

There was even a prior accusation, of laying the groundwork for election rigging, equally defamatory, when President David Granger decided to appoint retired Justice James Patterson as Chairman of GECOM. This was after a lengthy, but contentious process when he found three lists of candidates unsuitable. He exercised his option of appointment in accordance with the constitution.

For all of the vituperation, slander, and personal attacks hurled against the person of the Chairman, especially, he and the GECOM staff prepared for, and administrated, the proper/ successful conduct of the 2018 Local Government Elections (LGE), in the most professional and efficient of manner. It is instructive that there were no adverse complaints from the direction of the political opposition– the Peoples Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C)– that had been the vehicle for all the misleading information and unsubstantiated allegations against the national electoral body and its policies. It was a case of attempting to oust the Chairman, but such subterfuge failed. He stood tall in the pantheon of propriety.

A national electoral administrative body is the vehicle tasked with the holding of national elections in a particular jurisdiction. It has to be constitutionally sanctioned, and therefore empowered to plan and execute this most democratic of citizens’ rights – the exercising of the franchise which allows for the choice of a government and political leaders of one’s choice. It is a fundamental principle which underpins any true democracy, with the end result being that the sum total of its preparatory and administrative actions must be reflected in results that are transparent and undisputed.

For any such body to be successful and efficient in its delivery task, it has to rigidly adhere to its mandatory rule book, one of which is to ensure a national voters register/list that has been properly compiled within a reasonable time that allows for each would-be voter to be registered for the right of participation in the national electoral process. There can/should be no deviation from this most cardinal of democratic practices, since its denial to any citizen amounts to a flagrant refutation of one’s human rights.

At the moment, GECOM is being asked to provide a timeline for national elections at a time and within a particular time frame, for which it is not really prepared, or did anticipate. It is a situation which has been engendered by an act of treachery by a particular political collective whose daily shouts about having elections within the constitutional time frame, following the no-confidence motion, conveniently ignores its pivotal role in a sordid situation which by its own devious hand, it has created and foisted on to the nation’s shoulders.

It is wholly deceptive for those to now accuse the government of delaying tactics, or pressuring GECOM into holding elections, when it is the latter that has to advise the former as to its state of readiness. It is even extraordinarily misleading, and a national lie, for the political opposition and its forces to accuse the government of not adhering to constitutional timelines. Though it is recognized that constitutions do govern the manner of governance of a state that has such a seminal document, it does not/will not support the degradation of the rights of citizens, influenced by acts that are definably dishonest, with the portents for destructive and inimical to a functioning democracy.

There are those whose actions are designed to rush GECOM into a head-on collision with the nation – its citizens, proper. GECOM must not allow this to happen. For it must remember that it is ultimately responsible for the administration of free and fair elections that are to the satisfaction of the collective citizenry of Guyana, and not satisfy the convenience of those with personal ambitions and other selfish motives. GECOM must be guided always, that the very groupings that are now making such unreasonable demands of its functions will be the first to publicly hurl criticisms, should it not be professional and transparent; self- seekers and hypocrites that they are.

Regards
Earl Hamilton