The PPP nominated Commissioners of the Guyana Elections Commission walked out of another GECOM meeting today.

This time, the Commissioners objected to elections for 2019 not being an issue for discussion.

According to Commissioner Bibi Shadick, “there was an agenda item for Elections 2019, my question to the CEO (Chief Elections Officer) was does the Secretariat have a plan for holding elections in 2019 without house-to-house registration and he said no and so we left at that point, because we are not going to sit there to discuss any elections after house-to-house registration”

Government nominated Commissioner Vincent Alexander said as it is now GECOM has no mandate for elections in 2019.

He said he had no issue with elections being discussed, but the discussions could have been about elections generally and not elections for 2019, since no mandate currently exists for elections this year.

“When we got to an item called elections, there were some issues. I took the position that the item could not be Elections 2019, because where we are at now, the Commission does not have a mandate for elections in 2019, so that basically what we do is continue our house-to-house registration, which will not interfere with the possibility in elections in 2019, there is no mandate, as we speak, for elections in 2019, so i objected to the agenda item being specific to elections in 2019”, Alexander said.

The recent ruling by the Court of Appeal to invalidate the no-confidence motion has resulted in the Government not being forced to call early elections.

Even before that ruling, GECOM had already indicated that November would have been the timeline it was looking at for early elections.

The Opposition wanted a date much earlier and continues to be against house to house registration.

GECOM has started the process to begin house to house registration.

Related posts:

House-to-House Registration and Claims and Objections dominate Commissioners Meeting with new GECOM Chair GECOM Chair tells President Commission will be ready for elections by late November; Opposition nominated Commissioners object to letter PPP nominated Commissioners walk out of GECOM Meeting over house-to-house ads PPP nominated GECOM Commissioners not happy with Commission’s decision not to rehire Vishnu Persaud as Deputy Chief Elections Officer