A DETAILED budget for the conduct of Local Government Elections (LGE) slated for November 12, 2018 has been requested by at least one Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Commissioner on Tuesday when the full commission met to discuss its budgetary allocations.

“The matter was raised and I have requested a detailed budget for the conduct of LGE which I will scrutinise in terms of the cost of running those elections etc.,” said People’s Progressive Party (PPP) nominated Commissioner Sase Gunraj.

Gunraj told Guyana Chronicle just after the meeting ended on Tuesday that the hosting of LGE this year requires “peculiar expenditure”. He explained that as with every election, GECOM has to hire additional staff, increase logistic arrangements, as well as procuring special materials that are unique to every election. “I really am unsure as to how the government by virtue of what is being said by the two ministers (Finance and Communities) – how they expect GECOM to conduct these polls in the absence of resources,” the Commissioner stated.

And while Gunraj has not been given a timeline as to when the GECOM will provide the budget to the Commission for perusal, he intends to keep requesting same as it is important to the conduct of the upcoming elections. He reminded that GECOM had made a budgetary request for $3.715B for 2018 but that was slashed to a proposed $2.9B, some $800M less than requested. The actual expenditure for GECOM in 2016 amounted to $3.098B, the same year, Local Government Elections were held after a long hiatus.
Recently, GECOM via a statement to the media said that the $1.2B allocated for LGE is insufficient. The entity has indicated that soon it will be engaging the Ministry of Finance to boost this figure. The electoral body noted that $160M was allocated for capital works and items, and $1.6B for the normal operations of the Commission. The remaining sum of $1.2B was allotted for the conduct of LGE in November 2018. The elections body said in 2016, $1.5B was expended on LGE.

But on Saturday, Finance Minister Winston Jordan in response to GECOM’s public indication that it needs additional funds to host the elections said “We do not have a bottomless pit of money… everyone has money, but you cannot give any more than you get right now, so they have to cut and contrive… make it do.” “The last thing we want is GECOM coming and saying they want more money…. It is my heartfelt position that we have enough fiscal challenges, for instance, we must find the money to pay the second half of the severance among other things,” said Jordan.

He said the Commission cannot be doing the same thing for many years and not see any improvement. Minister Jordan believes that there are lots of expenditures which are ‘unnecessary’ and ‘wasteful’, noting that a lot of things have to be considered. “They have done back-to-back elections where billions were given and it was used to acquire infrastructure and consumables, many of which are still in the storage and so on,” Jordan said.

Meanwhile, the Guyana Chronicle had reported that despite challenges that may face the Commission, LGE would not be postponed. GECOM has said clearly that it will be moving ahead with all activities required in keeping with statutory timelines dictated by law. But even as GECOM had made this claim, Gunraj stressed that the without an election period GECOM incurs expenditure. “GECOM incurs expenditure. GECOM is doing continuous registration, GECOM has 27 odd field offices, GECOM has staff, facilities, rental, and all of those things are current expenditure. GECOM is building buildings to house the operations those are capital expenditure which made up the sum voted by Parliament,” the Commissioner added. Meanwhile, when contacted on Tuesday for a comment on the matter, GECOM’s Chair Justice (ret’d) James Patterson disclosed that GECOM’s budget of which LGE allocations is included was discussed by the Commission but was not in a position to comment on the matter at the time. Attempts to contact other GECOM Commissioners proved futile.