AFC threatens boycotting elections over GECOM’s current chair after wrong seat allocation

Last Updated on Sunday, 1 December 2024, 15:10 by Writer

GECOM Legal Officer Kurt Da Silva and Chairman, Retired Justice Claudette Singh.

The Alliance For Change (AFC) on Sunday said it would hold consultations on whether to boycott next year’s general elections if Retired Justice Claudette Singh remains the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Chairman, saying that she presided over the illegal occupation of a joinder parliamentary seat.

“The AFC will commence by engaging national stakeholders on the issue and its potential impact on the confidence of the processes under the current leadership. After we have had the benefit of those consultations we will deliberate up on our participation in the process,” party leader, Nigel Hughes told Demerara Waves Online News when asked whether his party would contest the elections with Ms Singh as Chairman.

The Liberty and Justice Party (LJP), A New and United Guyana (ANUG) and The New Movement (TNM) had contested the March 2020 elections as a “joinder” and after the polls, their individual votes were added and they were awarded one parliamentary seat. The LJP won 2,657 votes, ANUG, 2,313 and TNM, 244.

In keeping with a rotation agreement among those parties, LJP Leader Lenox Shuman first occupied the parliamentary seat. Wary that the TNM, with 244 votes, would have been shut out of parliament during the five-year election term, the parties had agreed to allow that party’s leader, Dr Asha Kissoon to serve her entitled 91 days and she was sworn in on April 24, 2023. She has refused to resign to allow an ANUG representative to serve as a parliamentarian.

The AFC’s latest basis for a loss of confidence in the GECOM Chairman is pegged to GECOM’s Legal Officer, Attorney-at-Law Kurt Da Silva saying at a news conference on November 22, 2024, that “if it’s one seat, it’s the party with the most votes gets that seat” for the duration of the parliamentary term. Mr Da Silva said if there is a vacant seat in the National Assembly, the House Speaker would have to formally ask the Representative of the List to submit the name of the person to fill that vacancy. “The list that that name needed to come from was the LJP’s,” he said. Deputy Chief Elections Officer, Aneal Giddings sought to shelter the GECOM Chairman from responding and said that matter was on GECOM’s agenda to ascertain how to interact with the National Assembly. Breaking her silence on that issue, she said that matter would be addressed “very shortly”: “Can I tell you something? That matter went before the Commission and they said nothing so there’s another step which I’m thinking of which I don’t want to divulge.”

But the AFC on Sunday said GECOM’s error in interpreting the Representation of the Peoples Act when it advised that a member of the National Assembly was permitted to occupy a seat which they were not legally entitled to do raises serious concerns about decisions by the National Assembly.

“The Alliance for Change is of the view that an error of this magnitude and its attendant consequences including permitting a person to vote on legislation for the past year when the person was not entitled to occupy a seat in the National Assembly and participate in its deliberations, has caused irreparable damage to the ability of GECOM, under its present leadership, to continue to manage the affairs of this organisation,” the AFC said. The AFC Leader said at the same time, Dr Kissoon’s ineligible parliamentary membership would not affect the results as the government holds a single seat majority. “Only in cases where the turnout was less than the full House and the vote on that bill passed by a single vote would there be a possibility of a challenge to the validity of the vote,” he added.

Decisions by dual nationality members of the National Assembly, including the passage of a no-confidence motion by Guyanese-Canadian Charrandass Persaud in 2018, were nevertheless upheld by the courts.

Mr Hughes said the AFC would first allow the parties, who are directly affected by this new position, or GECOM to determine their next steps before his party decides whether to go to the High Court to challenge the legality of Dr Kissoon’s membership of the National Assembly. He could not say how soon the AFC would take legal action if the affected parties have not responded as yet.