By Fareeza Haniff

AS the proposed March 18 date for holding Guyana’s historic Local Government Elections (LGE) draws closer, President David Granger is urging small groups and individual contestants to play their part in educating the electorate on how to vote on Election Day.Responding to questions posed by the Guyana Chronicle during his weekly programme, ‘The Public Interest’, the President pointed out that a large part of the population had never previously participated in LGE, thus much ignorance exists in this respect.
He called on those contesting the elections to play a more active role.

“Individual contestants who want to participate should go house-to-house…I expect the political candidates to also be part of the information process,” he said.
The President added, “APNU, in particular, has been campaigning for nearly three years. I don’t share the view that there is no enthusiasm. What I can say is that a large part of the population never participated in the elections before, so there might be ignorance; but it’s not ignorance born out of apathy, probably it’s ignorance born out of lack of information,” the President opined.

The President agrees that more needs to be done to educate the public, but he made it clear that the Government and the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) should not be blamed for this lack of information.

“I would admit, too, that there is a literacy problem in some communities, and merely handing out leaflets is not going to solve the problem. You need multi–media approach; you need to use social media; you need to use television; you need to use face-to-face contact; you need to have maybe street fairs and plays, explaining how to vote and who to vote for; who can be a candidate; what Local Government Elections are all about; and it’s never going to be enough,” President Granger said.

While in the Opposition, the President and his party members had picketed the then Office of the President on a weekly basis, calling for announcement of a date for holding LGE, given that those elections were last held in 1994.
Now that he is in office, and a date has been set, the President says he feels “good” about it.

“It feels good because we committed ourselves to Local Government Elections; we worked in the 10th Parliament — both the APNU+AFC. We feel it is not something monumental, we feel it is fundamental to democracy, and people in all of the regions and neighbourhoods and municipalities should run their own affairs,” he said.