Today’s meeting of the Guyana Elections Commission ended once again with no firm decision being made on the way forward for national elections, but with a possible March timeline for elections being presented.

The proposal with a timeline for elections in March 2020 was put before the Commission by the GECOM Secretariat today.

The Opposition nominated members of the Commission said such a proposal cannot be accepted. 

Commissioner Robeson Benn said there are now four proposals that have been presented by the secretariat that point to elections being held in March 2020.

“We are opposed to that situation and we are insisting that we accord with the Constitutional imperatives. We advised that the house-to-house registration is incomplete, it’s aborted, that there should only be minimal use of data from the house to house registration to identify persons who are first-time registrants”, Benn said.

Mr. Benn said if GECOM follows his suggestion to only pull out the first time registrants and add them to the National Register, it would shorten the process that is taking place now and would allow for elections by late November.

The Elections Commission will meet again on Tuesday to further look at the process for early elections in the aftermath of that no-confidence motion that was passed in December of last year. 

Government nominated Commissioner Vincent Alexander, said while the March timeline was presented to the Commission, it is not definite and other matters still have to be discussed.

The Opposition has accused the Elections Commission and the Government of being involved in delaying tactics.  The Government has said the Elections Commission is an independent body and ought to be allowed the time needed to do its work independently.

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