A meeting between the Alliance For Change and the Guyana Elections Commission ended this afternoon with the Leader of the Alliance For Change, prominent Attorney, Nigel Hughes, describing GECOM’s role at the meeting as disastrous.

Speaking briefly to reporters outside the GECOM Headquarters, Mr. Hughes said GECOM is incapable of hosting national elections.

“The meeting with GECOM has been absolutely disastrous from a GECOM perspective and we are now more than convinced that GECOM is incapable of holding national elections”, he said, while adding that the situation is “unbelievable”.

Mr. Hughes said he will offer more details at an evening press conference to be hosted by his party.

Deputy Chief Election Officer, Aneal Giddings, who attended the meeting said he would not want to get into any details related to the meeting that went on for three hours. However, he said he would not describe the meeting as “disastrous”.

“The meeting was productive”, he Giddings said.

Government nominated member of the Elections Commission, Sase Gunraj told reporters that the meeting was normal and several issues were discussed.

“There was a list of items that the AFC wrote the Commission about, but we were not surprised because going into the meeting, there clearly was a view that was already parroted and repeated in the media that they have no confidence in GECOM and it was repeated ad nauseam in the media and it is clear that the intent of today’s meeting was to act as such and the questions and interactions were clearly geared in that direction to perhaps convince themselves of that view which they have found, it is not surprising. GECOM can only do its best that the public has confidence in it, GECOM has, as far as I am aware, taken steps, But if we start to discuss why the public has lost confidence in GECOM, that’s another story, we have had successive elections”, Gunraj stated.

The Alliance For Change has been raising a number of issues related to the Guyana Elections Commission and its state of preparedness for elections, which are slated to take place later this year.

This was the first meeting between the Elections Commission and the AFC since Nigel Hughes was elected Leader of the AFC.

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