AFC expects elections ‘will and should be held’ this year

The Alliance For Change (AFC) said it expects that elections will be held this year.

“We would like, like every citizen in Guyana to have not just elections, but importantly credible elections, and we expect that those will and should be held before the end of this year,” Raphael Trotman, Chairman of the AFC, said at a press conference Thursday.

The Government is pushing for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to hold house to house registration before the next elections, a process which will take several months to complete.

The former GECOM Chair had said the process will be completed in late November, pushing elections to later this year, however, on June 24 Stanley Marcus, the lawyer representing GECOM before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) said the list will be ready until December 25.

The Government said the new cycle of registration is needed to ensure a credible list since the current voters’ list has a number of dead persons’ names.

The AFC Chair on Thursday also said there are persons with multiple names which are all on the current list.

Trotman, however, maintains that it is the President who has to decide a date for the holding of General and Regional Elections.

“We believe as well that the President should issue a proclamation.

“The Constitution [of Guyana] is preserved despite the ruling of the court that it is only the President of Guyana who can issue a proclamation announcing an election and naming a date for elections,” he noted.

The AFC Chair made his comments one day before the CCJ delivers consequential orders to its June 18^th ruling that the December 21^st No Confidence Motion was validly passed.

The Government and Opposition are currently engaged in a consultative process to determine the next Chair of GECOM after the CCJ ruled that the appointment of Justice James Patterson breached the constitution.