People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) Leader, Aubrey Norton says the formula used to select commissioners and the Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) must remain intact. However, he is advocating that the Chairman is not allowed to use the casting vote to settle deadlocks. He made this suggestion during a recent interview on “Politics 101” hosted by Dr David Hinds.
“What we have to probably do, is to have the same mechanism, but we should not give a casting vote to the Chair.” His suggestion is premised on the likelihood that if a chairman is not independent, then decisions are likely to be favourable to only one side.
According to him, the current Chair, Justice (retired) Claudette Singh, has voted numerous times in favour of the PPP/C commissioners, and this, he said, gives the impression that voting distribution is four against three.
“Because when you give a casting vote to the Chair and the Chair isn’t independent, [then] you are really saying there are four against three, rather than three, three and an independent Chairman. So, Madame Chief Justice or former Judge, Claudette Singh, has outlived her usefulness as a person who can be considered independent…And so, she needs to go her way,” he said.
Norton hastened to add that in the hands of a ‘partisan’, “the casting vote will destroy an attempt at democracy”. In his proposition, however, Norton provided no remedy to resolve stalemates that could potentially arrive if there is no casting vote to break ties.
In proffering his suggestion, Norton’s view on the configuration regarding the distribution of commissioners on GECOM runs parallel to sentiments recently expressed by the Vice-President, Bharrat Jagdeo.
That configuration or formula came from recommendations President Carter made for the 1992 election. Called the “Carter Formula”, the method was later integrated into the Constitution. According to that formula, three commissioners are to be appointed by the president, at his own discretion, and three appointed by the president on advice from the leader of the opposition. The chairperson is to be an independent person appointed by the president from a list of six candidates that are “not unacceptable” to the opposition. The leader of the opposition provides that candidate list after meaningful consultation with political parties represented in the National Assembly.
Jagdeo said that while the government is “open-minded” about changes to the formula, he dubbed it the “Saving Grace”; saying that it was the presence of PPP/C Commissioners that staved off electoral fraud during the prolonged five-month March 2020 General and Regional Elections.
The VP said that it was members of GECOM’s technical team, not the commissioners, who sought to subvert the will of the people during those elections.
At least three of those former technical officers were charged for electoral crimes, which has now prompted sweeping changes to the Representation of the People Act (ROPA) including the imposition of life sentences and multimillion-dollar fines against those found culpable of rigging.
Meanwhile, the formula has been cited by the Carter Center as “highly polarized” and “excludes newer parties”, with other institutions and citizens positing that the formula has outlived its usefulness since it only caters for participation between the governing party and the main opposition.
I guess it would have been fair if she was biased in the PNC’s favour.