Justice Jainarayan Singh Jr has ordered the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to allocate monies equitably to the combined parliamentary opposition parties to offset their respective expenses for the scruntineering activities in the upcoming house-to-house registration exercise.
The High Court order quashed GECOM’s decision taken on September 25, which had allocated half of the more than $100 million approved for scrutineering activities by Parliament to the PPP/C, the governing party, and the other half to the PNCR.
Since no mention was made of the other parliamentary opposition parties – the Alliance For Change (AFC) and Guyana Action Party/Rise Organise and Rebuild (GAP/ROAR) – a court action was filed on their behalf by parliamentarians David Patterson, of the AFC and Everall Franklin of GAP/ROAR.
The application was filed on the grounds that the PNCR does not constitute the combined parliamentary opposition but was merely one constituent of it. Franklin and Patterson said GECOM’s decision gave rise to concerns that the AFC and GAP/ROAR may be excluded from procuring finances for its scrutineers.
Justice Singh’s decision came on Monday when the respondents — GECOM; the PPP/C and the PNCR were scheduled to appear before the court but failed to do so. Their absence resulted in the judge granting the order as requested in the application by Franklin and Patterson.
In an affidavit in support of the motion filed by attorney-at-law Khemraj Ramjattan, 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. Under Section Eight of the Elections Laws (Amendment) Act 15 of 2000, provision is made for the payment of monies to scrutineers from the governing party on one hand, and on the other, from combined parliamentary opposition party.
The two stated that they were subsequently informed by commissioners from within GECOM of the decision taken on September 25; a decision referred to in court documents as unreasonable, arbitrary, discriminatory, unconstitutional, without jurisdiction and hence null and void.
Patterson and Franklin said their representative, Clayton Hall, Chief Executive Officer of the AFC communicating to GECOM’s representative Gocool Boodoo, Chief Election Officer addressed the concerns they raised through two pieces of correspondence dated August 16, 2007 and September 20, 2007.
GECOM then responded through Boodoo on October 2, 2007 and stated that at a statutory meeting on September 25 it was decided that GECOM had no authority under the law to make payments on a proportionality basis. As a result, Patterson and Franklin said, their attorney Ramjattan telephoned Boodoo on October 4, to say that GECOM’s decision not to allocate monies equitably and proportionately to the respective parliamentary opposition parties was unfair. He added that giving monies to a separate party representative, the PNCR, which does not represent the AFC or GAP/ROAR, might mean that AFC and GAP/ROAR scrutineers would be left unpaid.
However, the arguments did not impress Boodoo, according to the court application, since his short answer was that if the AFC and GAP/ROAR wanted fairness, equity and proportionality they must go to Parliament and pass a law to provide for the proportional allocation of such monies to the respective parties that comprise the combined parliamentary opposition. Boodhoo emphasized that this was a unanimous GECOM position on the issue.
According to the parliamentarians, their attorney had advised that GECOM had
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.
They stated that 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 payments.
