GECOM SITS AND WAITS – LIKE THE OLD GUMBIE CAT

The headline is not an original formulation. It is partially borrowed from the late Miles Fitzpatrick, then a columnist in the Stabroek News. He was writing just before the reforms of the early 1990s about the Elections Commission and its Chair, Sir Harold Bollers, a former Chief Justice of Guyana, in an article entitled “The […]

FREE, FAIR AND PEACEFUL ELECTIONS

Some foreign observers are unaware of Guyana’s electoral history. One wonders whether such observers are qualified to observe Guyana’s elections. They would not know, for example, that by itself, this history creates a perpetual tension at election time because of general fears of a repeat of election rigging. They would not know also that this […]

THE GHOST OF ESTHER PERREIRA

Esther Perreira, a PNC supporter, filed an election petition in 1998, challenging the validity of the 1997 elections on several grounds, one of which was that the elections were unlawfully conducted. It was argued that the provision made in Election Laws (Amendment) Act 1997, which was supported unanimously in the National Assembly, that a voter […]

SUBVERTING THE CHIEF JUSTICE’S DECISION, THROUGH THE BACK DOOR

On 26 September, 2019, Justice Claudette Singh, Chair of the Elections Commission, signed Order No. 70 of 2019, made under the National Registration Act pursuant to the powers conferred by sections 6(1)(a), 6(A), 13, 14 and 15 of the National Registration Act. The objective of the Order was to provide for what has become known […]

THE APNU+AFC HAS TRIUMPHED

APNU+AFC was shell-shocked after inviting the PPP/C Opposition to “bring it on,” that is, the no confidence motion. ‘Bassady’ by the head blow of the Charrandass Persaud’s supportive vote of the NCM, they unsteadily promised to comply with the Constitution and hold elections in three months. Then reality stepped in. Somebody discovered the fiction that […]