Guyana remains a stable democracy

PRIME Minister Moses Nagamootoo has affirmed that the APNU+AFC Government enjoys both de jure and de facto status. “Its legitimacy flows from the nation’s Constitution and from the overwhelming majority of our people who support it,” he said in his weekend column, My Turn.

He noted that, in spite of anxieties over early elections, the rights and freedom of all citizens are fully secured and protected.

“The government operates on an interim footing but does all routine functions from which citizens benefit. The Constitution invests in the Executive President and his interim government a life that goes beyond elections, until a new President is sworn in,” Prime Minister Nagamootoo asserted.

He said that it is in this context that the opposition must temper with responsibility its characterisation of the government as “illegal” from September 18, noting that this is not only a treacherous proposition but an invitation for anarchy.
The veteran politician and journalist declared, “The sky will not fall. No; not at all. Not on September 18, the day after, or at any other time at all”.

Anti-government elements have arbitrarily named September 18 as the drop-dead date for the holding of fresh elections. They had petitioned the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Guyana’s highest court, to name this as the deadline for elections. But the CCJ declined jurisdiction to do so, and refused to set any time-frame within which fresh elections could be held.

The CCJ ruled that it was for the constitutional players – the Parliament, Elections Commission, President and Opposition Leader – who could best do this in fulfilment of the requirements of the Guyana Constitution and through a consultative process.

He argued that anti-government elements had wrongly interpreted a provision of the Constitution for the holding of elections within ninety days following the passage of a confidence motion. That ninety-day period lapsed on March 21, 2019 and the CCJ in upholding on June 18, 2019 that the confidence motion was validly passed, did not order any mandatory period within which elections should be held.

Nagamootoo argued that there is no second ninety days. September 18 is a fiction, a figment in the infertile imagination of the political opposition.

He stated, however, that the inter-play of the judiciary was a necessary intervention that allowed a cooling off period for the Elections Commission to embark on preparations for early and credible elections, which include re-compilation of up-dated data of persons who are eligible to vote in elections.

“All Guyanese want early but credible elections. But at the core of serious concerns on all sides is the need for a clean list of electors. There are credible concerns that the voters list used in the last, 2015 elections, was bloated with names of unverified persons,” he further stated.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE :
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All our printed editions are available online
emblem3
Subscribe to the Guyana Chronicle.
Sign up to receive news and updates.
We respect your privacy.