The Alliance For Change (AFC) plans to engage the international community as early as next week over what is sees as the failure of the Guyana Elections Commission to act on recommendations that followed the highly controversial 2020 Elections.

A team from the AFC met with the Guyana Elections Commission on Thursday.

At the end of the meeting, the AFC declared that it was convinced that GECOM is incapable of hosting elections this year.

During a press conference on Thursday evening, Leader of the Alliance For Change, Nigel Hughes, said at the meeting with the Chairman and Commissioners of the Elections Commission, it was revealed that the Elections Commission did not act on any of the recommendations made by regional and international observers in 2020.

According to Mr. Hughes, it was also revealed that there was no review of the 2020 Elections and the operations of the election’s machinery then.

He said those revelations are deeply disturbing.

“GECOM admitted that it had conducted no review of the 2020 Elections, absolutely none. It had not conducted any review of its operations, it had not conducted any review of the third-party suppliers to them, they had not conducted any review in the way in which they internally managed the 2020 Elections,” Hughes said.

Hughes said it is unfortunate that GECOM did not see the need to review its operations or act on the recommendations from the regional and international observers.

In its report on the 2020 Elections in Guyana, the Atlanta-based Carter Centre noted that at the time there were 660,988 persons registered as voters for the 2020 Elections, which represented an increase of 15.5% from the 2015 election.

It said the number of registered voters seemed to be “disproportionate” to the country’s estimated population, and therefore recommended that “before the next election, the government reassess and overhaul both the process and the technology used to create and manage the voter registration database.”

However, while the National Assembly in December 2022 amended a number of the country’s election laws, the Voters’ List remains an issue of contention, with the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) stating repeatedly that it could only comply with the existing laws.

The Opposition has also been pushing for the use of enhanced biometrics at the place of poll, but Hughes said many of the issues raised by political parties, and observers have not been addressed.

“Now that we have had from GECOM an expressed statement that they have not conducted any review or implemented any of the recommendations of the international  community, we will certainly be going go each one of them individually, CARICOM, the Organization of American States, all of them, Carter Centre, the European Union and we will say to them, certainly by early next week that we have had this meeting and GECOM has said that they have not carried out any of the recommendations they made in 2020,” Hughes said.

The AFC Leader said pressure must be mounted on both the Government and GECOM to reverse the decisions on a number of important issues, including enhanced biometrics.

He said as of now, AFC strongly believes that GECOM is in no position to hold free and fair elections.

“We indicated to the Commission, no later than 25 minutes after the commencement of the meeting, that given what we would have just witnessed, and that during a very hostile exchange between the Commissioners, what we had just witnessed, what we had just witnessed in the Commission that we have no confidence in the Commission, given the way it currently operates and given what had clearly become evident that there was a lack of direction, lack of cohesion and lack of definitive position and that the Commission, the way it is presently structured and the way it presently conducts its operations, was and would be incapable of delivering credible Elections for 2025,” Hughes said.

Hughes said the meeting was revealing and GECOM has been poorly managing a number of important issues. He said the Elections Secretariat is ill prepared.

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