Dear Editor,

I am availing myself of the facility provided by your columns to comment on the interview given by Mr Haslyn Parris to Mr Mark McGowan reported in your issue of December 18 concerning the tenure of members of the Guyana Elections Commission (‘Longstanding defects in electoral laws must be addressed – Haslyn Parris’). Mr Parris is reported as having referred to a gap in the existing law because there is no reference to the term of office of members of the commission. I hope to offer the answer to Mr Parris’s concern.

The Elections Commission was first established by the 1961 Constitution which provided internal self government for this country, reserving defence and external affairs as the responsibility of the United Kingdom Government. That constitution included provision terminating membership of the Elections Commission three months after the declaration of the results of the election. The reason for this is the likelihood of a change in the representation of the political parties in the legislative body. This provision was retained in the constitution until 2002 when representatives of the Carter Center proposed that the commission should be established on a firm basis. This view was acquiesced in by the government’s legal advisers, with the result that the proviso was deleted with the consequence that the constitution is being construed as providing no limit to the tenure of office of members of the commission. This may even have led to the impression, erroneously in some quarters, that the membership has been made permanent by this change, unless, of course, a change in the numerical representation on the commission of the political parties that contested the election is required because of the results of the election.

It is my opinion that the decision to repeal the provision in the constitution which mandated the termination of the tenure of members of the commission three months after the declaration of the results of an election, did not take account of the distinction to be drawn between the establishment of the commission as a permanent constitutional entity or instrumentality by the relevant constitutional provision, as distinct from the members of that body and their term of office.

The constitution should be suitably amended at the earliest available opportunity to re-enact the constitutional provision which existed prior to the constitutional amendment in 2002.

Yours faithfully,
Brynmor Pollard, SC