Dr. Asha Kissoon was duly appointed to Parliament – GECOM Commissioner

The New Movement’s (TMN) Dr. Asha Kissoon was duly extracted from the party’s list of candidates and appointed to the National Assembly, Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) commissioners decided on Tuesday.

As such, cold water has been poured on calls for GECOM to potentially greenlight a recall of Dr. Kissoon from the National Assembly.

This is according to People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) Commissioner, Sase Gunraj who spoke to the News Room on Tuesday after a meeting of the Commission.

Because Dr. Kissoon enjoys a bonafide appointment, the Commissioner said there isn’t much else GECOM can do now.

“GECOM’s function and/or authority is activated again when there is a vacancy in the national assembly. As we speak there is no vacancy in the national assembly vis a vis that seat,” Mr. Gunraj said on Tuesday.

He added, “There is no active matter or issue for consideration by the Commission.”

There are at least two matters of concern now.

The first is that Dr. Kissoon has shown no sign of willingly giving up her seat in the National Assembly despite an agreement among three small parties that contested the 2020 General and Regional elections. Those parties are: TNM, the Liberty and Justice Party (LJP) and A New and United Guyana (ANUG).

The parties agreed to merge their votes to secure a single seat in Parliament and to share occupation of that seat in proportion to the votes each party earned.

LJP’s Lenox Shuman first went into the National Assembly. He then resigned, making way for Dr. Kissoon to enter the Parliament. Now, ANUG representatives and Mr. Shuman have said that Dr. Kissoon should have already been out of the Parliament, making way for the ANUG representative, Althia King.

But as ANUG and LJP representatives call for Dr. Kissoon to vacate the seat, another matter is up for consideration.

In a letter written to GECOM Chairwoman, Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh, the Head of the TNM’s List of Representatives in 2020, Gerald Forde asked that Dr. Kissoon be removed from the National Assembly. He, however, asked GECOM to first probe whether he (Mr. Forde) is still in fact the representative of the TMN’s list of candidates since both he and the deputy representative, Josh Kanhai left the party because of internal issues.

Mr. Forde told Justice Singh that he does not recall submitting any official correspondence indicating that he was no longer part of the party. That correspondence would have removed him as the representative of the list.

Without it, and without any engagements from GECOM, he believes he may very well be the representative of the TMN’s list. And he believes that would allow him to recall Dr. Kissoon from the National Assembly.

A TNM source told the News Room on Tuesday that indeed Forde and Kanhai resigned from the TMN in 2020. The source, however, said GECOM was informed of these resignations since 2020.

“So they have no capacity to act on behalf of TNM,” the source said.