Guyana Elections 2020

By a majority comprising opposition-nominated members and Chairperson Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh, the Guyana Elections Commission has decided to undertake a five-day field verification of all the new registrants recorded during the truncated national house-to-house registration exercise.

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has received applications from 14 new political parties for symbols with which they hope to contest the upcoming general and regional elections.

Over two weeks after the partners in the APNU+AFC governing coalition reached consensus on a revised Cummingsburg Accord, their electoral pact for next year’s elections, there is no word on when it will be formally signed though it has been indicated that the campaign launch will be on January 3rd, 2020.

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has decided to extend indefinitely the time within which around 18,000 persons can collect their national identification (ID) cards since a mere 805 have showed up during the 21 days previously announced.

PPP/C presidential candidate Irfaan Ali has dismissed criticisms that his plans to reopen shuttered sugar estates are unrealistic, while maintaining that he has a sound plan to resuscitate the industry.

After months of negotiations, the Alliance For Change (AFC) yesterday confirmed that its revised governance coalition accord with A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) will see it being allocated 10 parliamentary seats as opposed to the 12 it currently holds.

The New Movement (TNM), a new political party promising a vision to transform Guyana for all and boasting a clean slate and young leaders in key positions, was launched on Thursday afternoon.

A meeting yesterday between the two members of the governing APNU+AFC coalition ended with bright smiles and declarations of “excellent” as sources say the terms of a revised Cummingsburg Accord have been agreed for the 2020 general elections.

Noting that first oil augurs well for the country, Chairman of Republic Bank (Guyana) Limited, Nigel Baptiste says that this requires a stable social and political climate and he hoped that upcoming general and regional elections “will unfold smoothly”.

Following a five-hour meeting yesterday of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), the body is no closer to deciding what to do with the data collected during the aborted house-to-house registration carried out recently.

Dear Editor, In doing a piece of research I am working on, I had cause to read the Stabroek News of February 5, 1991, and the headline in that newspaper was `Kwayana resigns from Parliament’.

Governing coalition partners APNU and the AFC differ on when negotiations for a revised Cummingsburg Accord are expected to wrap up, with the AFC saying that Monday will be the last meeting between the two electoral allies while APNU has indicated that talks are likely to conclude before the end of the year.

Former Minister of State Joseph Harmon on Thursday announced that he is no longer a citizen of the United States of America (USA).

Although he ended union representation at his Pegasus Hotel back in 2010 following a bitter fallout with the Clerical and Commercial Workers Union (CCWU), Change Guyana presidential candidate and hotelier, Robert Badal says that he wants to make clear that he is not anti-union.

The 42-day Objection period of the 2019 Claims and Objections period ended on Monday with in excess of 13,000 objections lodged to the Preliminary Voters List (PVL).

The Change Guyana party yesterday announced that it would make sweeping across-the-board tax cuts should it be elected into office but it could not immediately say what measures would be implemented to cushion the likely deficits in revenue that would be created.

Migration, death, and even imprisonment are among the reasons why some city residents on the national register have not collected identification cards from the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), a check by this newspaper has found.

The  deadline given to the Alliance for Change’s negotiators by its constituency for a new Cummingsburg Accord with APNU expired yesterday but having failed to reach consensus on the proposed terms, the two governing coalition partners will have a final meeting on Thursday which will “ultimately decide” if they split for the 2020 General Elections, sources say.

Chairwoman of the Guyana Elections Com-mission (GECOM), Justice Claudette Singh, says GECOM is anticipating the assistance of two  experts from Ghana and India.

Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield has acknowledged that the commission staff was at fault in the granting of controversial proxies during the November 15, 2018 Local Government Elections (LGE).