POLITICAL parties in Guyana were on Thursday urged to desist from pushing ethnic division by Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Dr. Steve Surujbally. Dr. Surujbally was at the time responding to statements made by the Opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) at a recent meeting.
Attempts to create an ethnic divide will not be tolerated under Dr. Surujbally’s watch as he called on all political parties to provide facts to substantiate their claims.
The Opposition party requested among other things that the Elections Commission disclose the ethnicity of approximately 12,000 persons who worked during this year’s general elections. The request made by PPP’s General Secretary Clement Rohee was seen as an attempt to “embarrass this entity called GECOM” said Dr. Surujbally.
Rohee, GECOM’s chairman said, believes there was an ethnic disparity amongst GECOM’s employees during May’s general elections and as such sought to enquire about the perceived ethnic imbalance.
“GECOM has a procedure, a process. We do not employ Afro–Guyanese, we do not employ Indo–Guyanese, we employ Guyanese,” he said noting that ethnicity was never an issue for the Commission. “Let us stop this ethnicity thing,” he stressed.
On Monday, at a press conference hosted by Rohee at PPP’s headquarters, it was said that the party had many unanswered questions with respect to GECOM’s preparation for Local Government Elections. The PPP General Secretary said that both Surujbally and Lowenfield, GECOM’s Chief Elections Officer (CEO) failed to address the concerns of the party. As a result, the party considers GECOM to be “indifferent, defensive and evasive.”

This was refuted by both Dr. Surujbally and Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield who made it clear that GECOM answered all questions posed by Rohee. GECOM’s Chairman believes that the attack by Rohee amounted to an assault on the entity.
Dr. Surujbally assured the media that GECOM had bent over backwards to provide answers to the questions posed by the PPP. “The bending over backwards was so blatant in our responses,” said Surujbally, who found it difficult to fathom the PPP’s move to attack and embarrass GECOM.
Dr. Surujbally said it was time that the stereotyping of persons based on their ethnicity stops, “because if you are of a particular group there is a feeling that you are pro- or anti- a certain party,” said Dr. Surujbally.
“Obviously, anybody who has been proven to work inimically to the interest of GECOM or a political party I cannot see how we will continue to employ them,” he added.
He noted that every person has a partisanship to a party but persons need not be judged based on their ethnicity.
“We have right now two officers who have been acting in the position for five years because of this nonsense that this one’s mother was in some way with one party and the other was in some way involved with another party,” said GECOM’s Chairman.
Dr. Surjubally told the media that a document containing the names of persons who were employed by GECOM was presented to the Commission. “We got about 50 names or so, and the concomitant remarks were that they worked as party agents in 2011. Now, I have to tell you that that disturbs me in some way. If I am a political party and I am seeing people working at GECOM, that have worked before with a party it is worthy of concern, no question. But…not after the elections; I need that before the elections.”
He said no evidence to substantiate the claims by the PPP that those who worked with the Commission in one way or another were dishonest and acted contrary to their mandates.
“Nothing tells me on those 50 people where they erred, where they were miscreant, where they did things that were inimical to the interest of a party.”
All persons employed by GECOM have passed through a screening process where they are examined by officers of the entity. “Do I worry about the concern? What can we do? The people have followed that process,” Dr. Surujbally stated.
“If you want to change that procedure, and say we should have X amount of this race and Y amount of that… that would have to be under another chairman because I will not be part and parcel to that sort of differentiation. But the issue that would come up and the word used was the ethnicity, he wanted to know the ethnicity of those 12,000 plus people.”
GECOM’s Chairman said the Commission has a recording of the meeting with Rohee, “This is not something I am making up ladies and gentlemen. Like I said, I understand a political party saying I am a bit worried about that but prove to me that this person has done something really badly that would impact upon the result of an election.”
Dr. Surujbally noted that working with information provided by GECOM’s CEO, ethnicity is a “non-issue.”
Rohee believes that based on the responses provided by GECOM during the November 3 meeting, the Commission is not in a position to conduct Local Government Elections. The PPP said GECOM lacks the requisite competence to manage the elections.

By Ariana Gordon