AT Tuesday’s statutory meeting of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Commissioners were able to reduce a 10-week backlog of minutes from ‘abandoned’ meetings by some 75 per cent.

The backlog racked up over time as Opposition-nominated Commissioners had consecutively walked out of meetings since February 28, 2019.
They did so for several reasons but primarily in objection to talks relating to house-to-house registration which is currently in its preparation stage and is expected to commence in June, 2019.

Speaking with the newspaper on Tuesday, Government-nominated Commissioner Charles Corbin said that, while no substantive matters were discussed at the meeting, he is pleased that another walkout did not occur and some of the minutes were reviewed.
“There’s a change. The fact that the meeting concluded outside of a walkout is a significant change over the last several weeks,” Corbin said.

“We were basically attempting to catch up. Because of the aborted meetings there were a number of minutes of those aborted meetings that had to be considered. Even at the end we were not even able to complete because we are talking about being behind close to 10 meetings where there had been an effort to convene but we did not end properly.”
Questioned on what would have caused the change, Corbin said that it was as a result of the invocation of Article 226 of the Constitution by GECOM Chair Justice (Retired) James Patterson at a previous meeting.

The Article allows for the Chairman, if he loses a quorum, to reconvene the meeting within 48 hours and any four persons present, including the Chairman, at the meeting, would be considered a quorum and any decision made at the meeting would be considered as binding.

“He invoked that Article last Tuesday so a meeting was convened last Thursday so we met out of schedule. At that meeting is where the significant change occurred. The contribution of members suggested that there should be a change that they could do things differently,” Corbin said.

The Commissioners are expected to continue the review of minutes at the next meeting.
“At least we were able to reach a point where we were reviewing the minutes of the aborted meetings. With my figure, we’re about 75 per cent [through],” Corbin estimated
Following the review of minutes, the Government-nominated Commissioners hope that GECOM will be able to push ahead with its 2019 work programme.

The work programme primarily deals with house-to-house registration which was given the go-ahead by the Commission back in February following a majority vote on the Commission.

The Government-nominated Commissioners have lamented that the past lack of quorum has negatively impacted the Commission’s ability to analyse the reports of the Secretariat, especially the challenges faced in the execution of its mandate.
It has also hindered the employment of senior staff needed at the Commission.