Judge orders GECOM to show cause in decision on allocation of monies for scutineering

Justice Jainarayan Singh has ordered the Guyana Elections Commission to show cause why the court should not quash its recent decision refusing proportionate allocation of monies to the combined parliamentary opposition parties for the purpose of offsetting their respective expenses for scrutineering activities in the house-to-house registration.

The court also ordered GECOM yesterday to show cause why it should not be compelled to proportionately allocate to the respective parliamentary opposition parties such monies as will be provided by Parliament for them.

Parliamentarians David Patterson and Everall Franklin of the Alliance for Change and the Guyana Action Party/Rise Organise and Rebuild (GAP/ROAR) respectively, approached the court seeking the orders on the grounds that GECOM’s decision taken on September 25, 2007 is “unreasonable, arbitrary, discriminatory, unconstitutional, without jurisdiction and hence null and void.”

In an affidavit sworn in support of the motion, Patterson and Franklin said all the parliamentary political parties agreed on June 14, 2007 that a new house-to-house registration shall be conducted by GECOM and that under Section 8 of the Elections Laws Amendment Act 15 of 2000, provision is made for the payment of monies to scrutineers from the governing party and the combined parliamentary opposition parties.

They said they were subsequently informed by commissioners from within GECOM that an amount in excess of $100 million would be approved for scrutineering activities by Parliament and that GECOM has agreed to deliver half of this sum to the PPP/C, the governing party, and the other half to the PNCR, “which political party does not constitute the combined parliamentary opposition but merely one constituent thereof. This development gave rise to concerns that the AFC and GAP/ROAR may be excluded from procuring any finances for its scrutineers”.

Patterson and Franklin said their representative, Clayton Hall, Chief Executive Officer of the AFC communicating to GECOM’s representative Gocool Boodhoo, Chief Elections Officer addressed the concern through two correspondences dated August 16, 2007 and September 20, 2007. GECOM then responded through Boodhoo on October 2, 2007 and stated that at a statutory meeting on September 25, 2007 it was decided that GECOM had no authority under law to make payments on a proportionality basis.

As a result, Patterson and Franklin said, they indicated to Boodhoo through a telephone call from their attorney, Khemraj Ramjattan on October 4, 2007 that its decision not to equitably and proportionately allocate to the respective parliamentary opposition parties will be unfair in that giving monies to a separate party representative, the PNCR, who does not represent the AFC or GAP/ROAR, may mean that AFC and GAP/ROAR parties’ scrutineers will be left unpaid.

But the arguments did not impress Boodhoo, according to the court application, since his short answer was that if they wanted fairness, equity and proportionality they must go to Parliament and pass a law to provide for the proportionate allocation of such monies to the respective parities which comprise the combined parliamentary opposition parties.

Boodhoo emphasized that this was a unanimous GECOM position on the issue.

According to the parliamentarians, their attorney had advised that GECOM has the power and obligation under the Constitution of Guyana and the Election Laws to allocate on a proportionality basis the monies provided by Parliament for scrutineering activities in this house-to-house registration exercise to the combined parliamentary opposition parties.

Further, they said, PNCR leader Robert Corbin did acknowledge at his party’s press conference of October 11, 2007 that the combined opposition parties be remunerated on a pro rata basis, which is tantamount to what they have been calling on GECOM to do.

They said GECOM’s decision was made under a misapprehension of the constitutional and statutory provisions dealing with how the administrative conduct of a registration exercise should be carried out, especially the scrutineering activity and the payment.

The matter comes up for hearing on December 17, 2007.