Elections meeting to be held today
A PLANNED meeting of the seven-member Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to accept a report from the chief elections officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield, failed to get off the ground on Thursday because of a lack of quorum, at least two commission members told reporters.
Both the government-appointed commissioner, Vincent Alexander, and the opposition-nominated member, Sase Gunraj, confirmed that the meeting has now been rescheduled to today.
“The meeting did not take place; therefore, there is nothing official to report. Any chatter on the side, it is not my intention to bring that to the public domain,” Alexander told reporters outside the GECOM building.
But Gunraj, while he would not disclose why the other members of the commission failed to attend the talks, said that “no report has been received by the chairperson from the chief elections officer, and despite being told that he is on his way, up to when I left the building, he had not arrived”.
He said he believed that the commission has “certain powers” that he “is actively contemplating” but did not go into detail.
The opposition-nominated commissioner also dismissed reports that GECOM had been served with legal notice preventing Lowenfield from submitting a report to the GECOM chairperson, retired Justice Claudette Singh.
A senior official of the main opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) dismissed as “a nuisance-value litigation” an injunction being sought by a private citizen aimed at preventing the GECOM from declaring the results of the disputed March 2 regional and general elections.
Former attorney general and PPP/C executive member Anil Nandlall, in a statement posted on the official website of the PPP/C, said the injunction being sought by Eslyn David has absolutely no prospects of success.
“It raises no serious questions of law. It is absolutely frivolous, and vexatious and will be dismissed,” he said, adding that “it must be ignored” by GECOM.
“The nation’s important business cannot be stalled on the basis of such legal frivolity. It confirms APNU/AFC’s pandemonium. It is simply designed to stall and must be rejected by GECOM. The chairperson, an experienced former Court of Appeal judge, would clearly see it for what it is: specious, wholly without merit, and an abuse of the process of the court,” he added.