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Govt’s continued illegal existence

Govt’s continued illegal existence

Dear Editor,
The September 18 date marks a second deadline that has been disregarded by the Granger Government, despite the constitutional requirements expressed in Article 106 (6) and (7) and the rulings of the CCJ— which is our final appellate court.

This is outrageous behaviour where a Government can show gross disrespect for the court as well as the Constitution of this country, but such has been the situation in Guyana ever since the passage of a successful No-Confidence Motion, and the downfall of the coalition. They have refused to abide by the dictates of the law and has held this country in abeyance while all sorts of manufactured excuses spewed forth why they should stay in office while disregarding the Constitution.

We are now at the second chapter of broken timelines and into another version of full blown season of a PNC bullying Government. There is no question on anyone’s mind as to Granger and his Government’s schemes and where they are headed in this dilly dallying of circumstances. What is clear, is that they do not want elections and if there are, they have planned it that those elections would be rigged.

Now, I urge readers to carefully follow the sequence of events and make their own decision:
1) A successful passage of a No-Confidence Motion on December 21, 2018 and the coalition Government fell.
2) Article 106 (6) and (7) of the Constitution takes immediate effect.
3) Granger’s Government refuses to accept defeat and stays in government regardless.
4) The timeline of 90 days when elections should have been called expired March 21, 2019.
5)The CCJ— our final Court— rules that elections should be called no later than September 18, 2019, this date has come and gone and still the President and his Cabinet refuse to resign or set an election date; instead, Granger comes on television and issues a convoluted statement of GECOM setting a time for elections.
6) GECOM, on the other hand, is dragging its feet in not having the Election Commission ready for elections.

In all of these twists and turns in this latest saga of elections being held in this country, one salient fact stands out and that is the Government would not budge, as it continues its illegal existence, as well as an election commission which follows suit.

I make that bold remark in light of recent findings as relates to respect for the law and honouring timelines.
The laws of Guyana cry out for the GECOM to go straight ahead into the Claims and Objections phase and be in readiness for election later this year, but instead of that, we have the Government, through its Commissioners, saying no, we are going to “pad the voters’ list” and some other nebulous excuse that elections cannot be held this year. Now, if elections cannot be held this year, then when will election be held? This is the foolishness that is transpiring right before our very eyes.

Now, in the previous paragraph I hinted that the Government wants to pad the voters’ list before, if ever, they call elections. And I mean just that, for the simple fact that the present asinine excuse that the voters’ list has to be cleansed of its dead persons, while the new registrants has to be added, or merged into the NRR, is truly a reckless and evil statement. The Government keeps harping on the figure of 370,000 “new registrants” which is an indication that these are first time registrants? Far from it, you cannot tell anyone, even someone with half a brain, that Guyana’s voting population actually doubled in 5 months? This is an outrageous lie and that propaganda has to stop now.

That 370,000 names are duplicate registrants and these cannot be merged into anything. The reality is, any new registrants for the most part would see a representative figure of about 2,000 plus names, and those names could have been easily grafted into the National List of Electors through the continuous registration process. There was no need for a House-to-House, which we have witnessed was never completed. You cannot add— or as they are implying “merge”— incomplete and unverified data on to the NLE, this is illegal and constitutes a fraud and this retired Judge Chairwoman knows that. What she will succeed in carrying out with that merger is a confused and duplicated list which will very well stretch the final verification process way beyond August of next year.

The point I am making is that the Granger Government is bent on padding the voters’ list with duplicated names and that means that the PNC would have succeeded in carrying out the most brazen rigging exercise never seen before in Guyana.

We must have national election, free, fair and unbiased and the true party will come out triumphant. We have come too far to turn back now.

Respectfully,
Neil Adams

 

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