Last week [December 7] the Chief Elections Officer [Mr. Vishnu Persaud] suggested that there was a need for us to halt the process and provide a response to the situation which emerged when the court was approached by the APNU+AFC. So, the process in some regards was halted to provide a response to that. The issue that the APNU+AFC was seeking to address is the fact that the manner in which the List was being prepared contravene the law, in terms of how the list for Local Government should be prepared.
The list for Local Government should be prepared from on an extraction on the basis of constituencies and Local Government areas, so that people can approach the question of Claims and Objections from the standpoint of whether somebody resides in a constituency and/or a local government area, because residency is one of the elements necessary to be on a list of Local Government elections, bearing in mind the lists are constituency based and local government area based.
We have 80 Local Government areas and in those 80 areas we have now over 600 constituencies, and since you will be voting for a councillor for each constituency, then there has to be a list specific to that constituency, and the people voting have to reside in that constituency. But they prepared the lists as though they are preparing for National Elections, so there’s no provision for persons who don’t reside to be taken off the list. That was the proposition
However, as we sought to correct that matter, a second point was made, and that is, that the minister had gone about declaring constituencies and their boundaries when the law does not provide for him to do that. And so yesterday it came to a head, where whilst there was a proposal to correct the preparation of the list, we said you cannot proceed to do that if you don’t have the list properly constituted because it has to be on the basis of constituencies, and since the minister [Nigel Dharamlall] sought to constitute the constituencies, you have to undo, and let GECOM constitute the constituencies.
So, we paused again yesterday [December 13]. And today [December 14], finally, and unambiguously the Chairperson [Justice Claudette Singh] ruled the minister had incorrectly or unlawfully sought to establish constituencies, and that we now have to undo what he did, as the basis for going forward. So, we know that the minister’s constituencies are not existent because they are not legal.
What we have not finalised is how we will go forward in terms of finalising those constituencies. Commissioners have asked for time to look at the matter and so that matter has been placed on ice and will be addressed Tuesday [December 20]. So, basically that’s where we are right now.
We know that Nomination Day has been cancelled. As we speak, now, we do not have a Nomination Day and therefore the whole question of the timetable for the Local Government Elections is up in the air, depending on: – 1) how we deal with the issue of constituencies, and 2) how we deal with the issue of preparing the list for those elections.
