HEAD of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon yesterday reported that Cabinet this week continued its “highly focused weekly review” of the electoral process and, specifically, the Guyana Elections Commission’s (GECOM) electoral readiness for elections.

“Cabinet reasoned that the ongoing activities by GECOM, and extended to the stakeholders involved in the elections, was obviously targeting general and regional elections,” Luncheon said while addressing his post-Cabinet press briefing.
Speaking at the Office of the President, in Georgetown, he further reported that Cabinet’s interest continued on the list that had been circulated by GECOM and the Claims and Objections period that had been instituted by GECOM after the sixth round of continuous registration.
“Where the list was concerned, the earnest desire of Cabinet was to ensure a cleaness.” “Where the Claims and Objections period was concerned, Cabinet wanted abundant conviction that the time that had been allocated for this process was enough; it was suitable for the tasks of Claims and Objections, particularly with the load, the numbers of transfers that reportedly had to be made in the context of population shifts since the 2011 general and regional elections,” he said.
Cabinet, according to him has undertaken to keep the concerns on these two areas alive and to engage “constructively” with GECOM on getting the assurances that these matters would be properly handled.
Meanwhile, the Government has called on GECOM to provide a timely and more thorough and holistic status report detailing its level of readiness and preparedness for the holding of local government and/or general elections.
“There seems to be a view that this might be a march that GECOM is pulling, by seeming to set an election date… because without a declaration by setting a qualifying date that confers an obligatory period of validity of a list. Then, it’s saying if you want to use that list Mr. President you have to call elections within this period,” Luncheon had said at an earlier press briefing.
He said there can be something “sinister” in this approach since it essentially marginalises the constitutional role of the Executive President in making that declaration for elections.
He recalled that prior to 1992, considerable amounts of energy and lives were lost in disputes and contentions over matters of electorate management; and from 1992 onwards, the wave of free and fair elections has not been a feature of the electoral practices in Guyana.

(By Telesha Ramnarine)