Stabroek News
March 5, 2001

The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) is urging that all parties voluntarily accept the concept of priority listing in geographic constituencies.

Priority listing would "dramatically shift accountability of constituency candidates to the electors, rendering them less beholden to the (party) leader," the GHRA contended.

A release from the local human rights body on Saturday said that priority listing implies that the seats won by a party in a constituency would be taken in turn by candidates from the top of the list downwards.

The GHRA observed that currently the party leader chooses whom he pleases from the list. Besides, names of candidates will not be listed on the ballot paper and that adds urgency to the need for lists to be published early.

According to the GHRA, its recommendation would set important improvements in train - parliamentary candidates would have an incentive to focus on their constituencies and its particular needs; advertising and general campaigning would focus on a broader range of candidates; constituency members would have an incentive to learn more about candidates running in their constituency.

Campaigning currently, the release said, suggests there is an election between two leaders and lists of anonymous others.

The release stated that priority listing has always been available as a voluntary option to which any party can commit itself.

The GHRA asserted that "as a gesture towards democratic campaigning and respecting the spirit of the new electoral laws, parties should commit themselves to priority listing. Anything less renders geographic constituencies meaningless."

The GHRA also expressed the view that the current campaign being waged by the two major parties is "generating a variety of negative responses from an electorate that hoped for and deserves better."

The GHRA remarked that "ridiculing leaders encourages racial voting, sweeping more rational approaches out of the picture. Vanquishing each other appears to be the sole, over-riding interest of both the PPP and the PNC. Other parties have been marginalised by confrontational campaigning and television propaganda shows."