Dear Editor,
Thanks to my young colleague, Brother Nigel Westmaas, I am able to find a reference to justify my sense for some weeks of a seeming gap in the learned, or spirited arguments going on at home in Guyana. I am therefore delaying my draft on political mishaps in Guyana and giving priority to this letter to the editor.
The record found by Nigel Westmaas reveals that in January 2001, Justice Claudette Singh handed down her decision on the elections petitions against the 1997 General Elections won by the PPP. The Judge found that the elections were illegal, as the Parliament’s requirement for a voter identification card as a qualification for voting was in violation of the Constitution. The dispatch of correspondent Mr. Bert Wilkinson, following the handing down of the judgment, captures some of its important findings and also some of the political responses at the time. For quick reference, it deserves to be studied, along with other available reports. The then Attorney General, Mr. Doodnauth Singh, declared the judgment “unprecedented in the Commonwealth” and regarded it as significant. Responding to the judgment, Opposition Leader and former President, Mr. Desmond Hoyte, launched a campaign for the government to demit office and allow a Caretaker Government to fill the void. Some of us will remember the cries, “Demit! Demit! Demit!” that came especially from former President Hoyte. There was no call for sanctions.
A study or review of the period following Justice Claudette Singh’s judgment will be most helpful in the present situation and may help to pour oil on troubled waters and lend reason and balance to the rising unease. No one seems to dispute that, assuming that the no-confidence vote continues to be held valid, elections will be due at a date agreed upon and in keeping with existing laws. However, under the Constitution, elections do not hold themselves but are managed and controlled by the Elections Commission. Under the Constitution, the Guyana Elections Commission is an autonomous Commission responsible to the nation and it should be able to speak on its own behalf.
In my personal opinion, the elections of 2001, though overdue under the Herdmanston Agreement, were rushed and became one of the factors leading up to what developed in the years following. At an all-party meeting to consider arrangements for the elections due, the PPP representative, a non-member of the Commission, announced that the Elections Commission was ready to hold elections. The WPA delegation objected and pointed out that there was a danger that the elections would be rushed. The PNC delegate, who can be named, supported the PPP and said that the PNC was ready for elections. Before that meeting was over, news arrived that Parliament had been dissolved. The WPA pointed out that dissolution of Parliament was part of the electoral arrangements affecting the timing of the elections, and that the dissolution made the all-party committee farcical.
I learned in Trinidad in the 1980s, from observation, that the person who spoke for the Elections Commission was Mr. Justice Hyatt Ali, its chairperson. I wish to argue, therefore, that if there is a disability on the part of the Elections Commission to comply with constitutionally valid requirements, the Commission itself, as a legal person, should approach the appropriate court in its own name with a request for a declaration. This is a recommendation from someone unlearned in the law and the relative limits of the powers of constitutional authorities. It is, therefore, open to correction or dismissal from those who are learned in these matters. However, the recommendation is made in an effort to avoid a return to previous, painful experiences. I have avoided a repetition or recall of all the events and developments that mingled in those days to lead us to places where we had not been before.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
