In response to a letter writer in one of the daily newspapers, the Guyana Elections Commission today made it clear that it has no authority to remove the Leader of The New Movement part, Dr. Asha Kissoon, from the National Assembly, although the Commission is still actively discussing her presence in the Assembly and the procedures that led to that presence.

In its statement, the Elections Commission identified the Constitutional provisions under which a Member of the National Assembly can be removed, and those provisions do no not allow a role for GECOM.

GECOM has found itself in the middle of the controversy over Dr. Kissoon’s refusal to surrender the Parliamentary seat allocated to the three Joinder parties in keeping with an agreement.

Kissoon, in keeping with the agreement with the other two parties, should have vacated the seat after 90 days. However, it has been more than 15 months since she has occupied the seat, refusing to make way for the representative of A New and United Guyana, to take up the parliamentary seat.

GECOM has been discussing the issue because the Leader of The New Movement list, Dr. Gerald Forde, has invoked his power of recall, but the Elections Commission and the National Assembly appeared to have allowed Kissoon into the National Assembly without the List Leader’s guidance in keeping with the Constitution. Kissoon had claimed that Forde was removed as Leader of her party’s list, but the Guyana Elections appears to have no evidence of that, and may have erred when it allowed Kissoon’s name to be extracted for the National Assembly in the first place using a letter from her party that was signed by a list leader that the Elections Commission has no record of.

The other parties that make up the Joinder List and the known Leader of the List have all been pressing for Kissoon’s removal as an MP. However, she has remained in the seat and has so far refused to budge, or even address the issue. Her party pulled in just over 200 votes at the last elections. When she became a Member of the National Assembly, the PPP Government used its majority to make her the Deputy Speaker.

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