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Will GECOM again prove to be a willing partner in the political power play?

Dear Editor,

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Constitution of Guyana is worth little more than the paper on which it is written.

At least that is how it is coming across in so far as the current APNU+AFC administration is  treating with the provisions of the Constitution as it relates to the no-confidence vote and the rulings of the Caribbean Court of Justice in its interpretation of the Constitution.

What is playing out today is not entirely new. History will show that the Constitution was always used, conveniently, to subvert democratic rule going back since the elections of 1953, the first under universal adult suffrage. The PPP won a landslide victory by capturing 18 of the 24 seats. Despite that overwhelming victory, the British Government suspended the Constitution and ejected the popularly elected PPP out of the seat of government after a mere 133 days in office. An interim government was appointed by the British Government until 1957 when fresh elections were held which were convincingly won by the PPP (Jagan).

In the elections of 1964, in what the former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson described as a “fiddled constitutional arrangement’ the PPP was again engineered out of office despite having won a plurality of the votes.

Since 1964, several attempts were made by the PNC regime to fiddle with the Constitution to institutionalize minority rule. In 1980, the Constitution was amended to allow for an Executive President and a Minority Leader which positions were held by Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan respectively,  albeit in highly flawed elections.

The point I am seeking to make is that Guyana’s problems are essentially political and not

‘constitutional’. The Constitution is used, as in the past, to institutionalize undemocratic rule. At the bottom of it all is the desire of the PNC, now APNU+AFC to perpetuate its life in Government by undemocratic means. In doing so, it had almost invariably found common cause with the Guyana Elections Commission, with the exception of the post-1992 period when the Commission was reconfigured and revamped, thanks to the intervention of the Carter Center and  western countries.

History has a way of repeating itself, even in some of the most ingenious ways. Will GECOM again prove to be a willing partner in the political power play? Is it willing to facilitate free and fair elections within a reasonable time frame given the fact that the elections are already long overdue? Only time will tell.

Yours faithfully,

Hydar Ally

 

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