– Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo

THE work of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) must go on, said Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo following the ruling by acting Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire that upholds the appointment of retired Justice James Patterson as chairman to the commission.

The Opposition has since threatened to challenge the ruling at the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).
“The legal effort at discrediting Chairman Patterson and impeding the work of GECOM has clearly failed,” said Nagamootoo, noting that the commission has much work to do in preparation for Local Government polls to be held this year and Regional and General Elections in 2020.
The chief justice’s ruling establishes that Justice Patterson is qualified to be appointed GECOM’s chair and that President David Granger acted constitutionally when he appointed him.

No court of law would find credible some of the main arguments advanced by the Opposition party, Nagamootoo said.
“Those included submissions that Justice Patterson was unacceptable on the idiotic ground that he had been a pallbearer at the funeral of former President Desmond Hoyte, who was a Senior Counsel at the time of his death,” the prime minister said.

He noted that the constitution sets out the qualification for a list of persons, which must be submitted by the Opposition Leader and should be not unacceptable to the President.
“It places the responsibility for submitting an acceptable list on the shoulders of the Leader of the Opposition and if he does not, for any reason whatsoever, he himself would impugn his own list(s).”

According to Nagamootoo, the Opposition has embarked on a campaign to discredit the upcoming elections.
“It has also added to that, a racist claim of ‘ethnic cleansing’ as regards GECOM’s staff. It would hope to buttress these absurd contentions by doing everything possible to destabilise the work of GECOM and frustrate the electoral processes,” he said.
Junior Finance Minister and executive of the Justice for All Party, Jaipaul Sharma, also believes that GECOM’s work must continue now that the court has dealt with what he sees as another distraction from the Opposition.

Sharma said the chief justice’s ruling was “very insightful and wise” in shooting down every argument by the Opposition.
According to Sharma, the chief justice recognised the PPP’s inconsistencies when they argued, for example, that Patterson was appointed by the President as an advisor and on a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) while the Opposition had submitted nominees who were also advisors or working for the government at the time.

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Sharma charged that the PPP is embarrassed by the ruling since it shows their politicising of the GECOM appointment. He said that it also stood out that the President had accommodated the Opposition with three lists of nominees despite the law requiring one list is to be submitted by the Opposition Leader.

And, despite the Opposition Leader procrastinating and playing for time by claiming he was speaking to civil society, he still failed to put forward a proper list.
Regarding the list of nominees provided by the Opposition Leader, Sharma believes that the Opposition was trying to force the President’s choice. He said while the criteria was provided by the President for a “fit and proper” GECOM chair, the Opposition Leader had provided lists where one or two persons were meeting the criteria which predominately required a person of “…who holds or who has held office as a judge of a court having unlimited jurisdiction in civil and criminal matters in some part of the Commonwealth, or a court having jurisdiction in appeals from any such court, or who is qualified to be appointed as any such judge, or any other fit and proper person”.

To provide one or two persons with these qualities, three times on a list of six is effectively limiting the President’s choices and leading to a particular candidate, Sharma opined.
Former Presidential advisor and independent commentator, Raymond Gaskin, had a vastly different view. He said the idea of the Constitution regarding the GECOM chair is that the Opposition Leader and the President agree on who becomes the GECOM chairman. He believes that the President should have given specific reasons for rejecting the Opposition Leader’s list of nominees.