The Guyana government has announced that it will be convening a national stakeholders’ consultation on the draft amendments to Guyana’s electoral laws next Tuesday.

The process will be led by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance.

The Ministry said the consultation is an integral element of the Government’s commitment to implement a consultative, inclusive and participatory process regarding electoral reform.

Additionally, it was noted that the stakeholder consultation forms part of a continuous consultative process which started in November 2021 when the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance published the draft Representation of the People’s (Amendment) (ROPA) Bill and the draft Regulations made under the Representation of the People Act on its social media pages.

The Opposition did not take part in the initial process which ran for six weeks and saw submissions being made by civil society groups and the Guyana Elections Commission, but there has not been much interest in that process.

The Opposition is again registering its dissatisfaction of the process which it said should not be led by the government in the first place.

In a statement this morning, the Opposition APNU+AFC said the government must face the reality that the nation has rejected both its amendments to RoPA and its public consultations on electoral reform.

“This rejection is informed by the fact that the PPP’s approach is piecemeal, deceitful, and self-serving. It totally fails to address key systemic and structural flaws and weaknesses in our electoral system. It totally avoids any consideration of major constitutional, statutory, administrative, operational, and technological reforms,” the Opposition said this morning.

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