Mayors and Deputy Mayors of the ten municipalities will be sworn in today by President Irfaan Ali at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.
According to a notice from the Office of the President, the Oath of Office will also be administered to Vice Chairman of Region Ten Mark Goring.
Goring replaces Douglas Gittens, who died in June 2021 after being diagnosed with COVID-19.
Local Government Elections (LGE) were held on June 12th and most of the mayors and their deputies were elected by early July, but there has been a delay in them being sworn in and thus they have been barred from performing their functions.
The Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) late last month had called on President Ali to administer the oaths.
In a statement, the GTUC had noted that Cap 28:01, Section 18 ‘Oath of Office’ stipulates: “The Mayor and the Deputy Mayor shall, before performing any of the functions of their respective offices, take before the President an oath of office in form set out in the Second Schedule.”
The GTUC had called it a “shame, disgrace and violation that so many weeks after” the LGE was completed and the results declared by the Guyana Elections Commission, “the mayors and deputy mayors, who were elected, have not yet been sworn in and therefore cannot legally function”.
It had called on the elected mayors and deputies not to allow themselves to be lured into acts of lawlessness and to be mindful that they have no legal instrument to perform duties in the said roles. It urged those who had taken it upon themselves to function without the said instrument to cease such function immediately and demand that they be legally sworn in to perform their duties
“Remaining silent and/or participating in this illegality that has been foisted on this nation by President Ali and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) regime, would be encouraging and setting a dangerous precedent, and communicating to society support for the decline in good governance, and contempt for the Rule of Law,” the statement had said.
The GTUC had also called on Aubrey Norton, Leader of the Opposition, and Chairman of APNU that contested the Local Government Elections to make a clear and strident call to President Ali to uphold the laws.
