The provisions of both the old and the new constitution provide for an autonomous Elections Commission to conduct elections, be they parliamentary or local government elections.

Prior to 1992 there was a three-man commission with a chairman appointed by the President and one of its other members nominated for appointment by the ruling party and the third by the parliamentary opposition.

Prior to the 1992 general elections wresting control of the Elections Commission from the grasp of the ruling party was the prime objective of the opposition parties. They all felt that a commission constituted in a manner which did not give an unfair advantage to the ruling party would go a long way towards ensuring free, fair and transparent elections.

The Carter/Price formula was introduced for the 1992 elections and it offered the parliamentary opposition parties the opportunity of determining policies under a chairman of the commission who was not unacceptable to the President and by extension the ruling party. The membership of the commission was expanded to seven members, three of whom were appointed on nomination by the ruling party and three others nominated by the Leader of the Opposition after consultations with the parties of the parliamentary opposition.
Sheila Holder

The chairman of the commission is chosen from a list, submitted by the Leader of the Opposition to the President, of six persons not unacceptable to the President.

The appropriateness of the formula however is now being questioned since it does not provide for the inclusion of civic society and other interest groups such as the trade union movement and other interested stakeholders.

Ideally, the solution is the establishment of a commission comprised of technically competent persons with no ties to any political party.

As yet there has been no public discussion initiated by either the PPP/C, the PNCR or ROAR on this issue about moving towards the ideal as obtains in India or some intermediate stage. It should be noted that a discussion on the permanence of the Elections Commission is on the agenda of the Jagdeo/Corbin constructive engagement process.

GAP/WPA position

The GAP/WPA parliamentarian Sheila Holder, however, has commented on the composition and the need to make it more inclusive. Before submitting the names of the three persons he was required to nominate for appointment, then Leader of the Opposition, Desmond Hoyte consulted with all the members of the parliamentary opposition which then consisted of the PNC, the WPA and The United Force.

Holder has observed that as presently constituted, the commission has no representation from ROAR and GAP/WPA. Additionally, she would like to see representation from civil society and says, according to the Sunday Stabroek (January 11, 2004) that the commission should be independent of all politicians who are now part of the "tyrannical arrangement" based on proportionality.

"We have a highly politicized elections commission and accountability, as far as elections are concerned, has been put on the backburner."

Holder told Current Affairs that she places dodging the implications of the one-off electoral system in the same category as the reform of the composition of the commission because there is little agitation for a national process to begin to devise a new appropriate electoral system to address the systemic problems to which the 1998 Herdmanston Accord referred. The one-off electoral system is that used at the 2001 general elections. For the 2006 elections a new electoral system is to be put in place but the political parties have yet to initiate the discussions, public or otherwise.

A permanent elections commission

In the run-up to the 2001 elections legislation was enacted to amend the constitution which then provided for the term of the members of the elections commission to come to an end three months after the holding of an election following the date of their appointment to the commission. The idea was to establish a permanent commission, but observers now say that the legislation was badly drafted and that the drafters did not understand the concept of permanence that was intended.

They contend that the permanence that was intended was like that of a company, which is permanent even though its board of directors is changed from time to time. Similarly the legislation should have provided for the commission, which includes its secretariat, to be permanent while allowing for the commissioners to be changed periodically.

Inadvertently, the legislation did not address the length of the term of the commissioners and as a result the commissioners who were appointed to oversee the last elections, save for the chairman, Maj Gen (rtd) Joe Singh SC, who resigned to take up an appointment with an international organisation are still in place. Singh had been offered the position before he was appointed chairman and had deferred taking up the appointment to serve the nation.

A PNCR official agrees, explaining that the legislation was enacted to ensure that the commission did not go out of existence three months after an election as the constitution then provided. The official asserted that it was never the intention that the commissioners should be appointed for life. However, sources close to the Attorney General's Chambers have told Current Affairs, that no legislation to address the issue is at present being drafted.

The Parris proposals

Haslyn Parris who was appointed to replace Robert Corbin who contested the March 2001 elections since May 2001 recognised the problem and had had drawn it to the attention of the other members of the commission. Current Affairs understands too that the problems identified by Parris were brought to the attention of President Jagdeo and then PNCR leader, the late Desmond Hoyte, but both took no action to address it.

In a memorandum about the issue he circulated to the other commissioners Parris noted that the current legislation provides that "GECOM is a "permanent", on-going, institution constitutionally mandated to be responsible for all aspects of the electoral processes that are to be implemented for General, Regional, and Local Government elections."

He pointed out, "GECOM is intended to be an "autonomous" institution, in the sense of not being directly subject to direction by any individual political party, or any collaborating group of political parties, in the discharge of its mandate."

However, he noted that the commission "is nevertheless accountable to Parliament and must function, under a full-time Chairperson, within the rules and regulations determined by Parliament. Once the Constitution has been amended, GECOM's reporting relationship will be to the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Constitutional Reform (PSCCR), and appropriate legislation will have to be passed to establish this reporting relationship formally."

Parris said then, "The new legislation would have to take account of the intention that there shall be an evolutionary process applied to the Constitution and to the electoral processes associated therewith."

The autonomy of the Commission is now under question with the Ministry of Finance, backed by the Office of the President, challenging its right to set the remuneration of its staff without reference to the Ministry of Finance.

The Ministry of Finance and the Office of the President did not question the salary set by the commission for the Chief Election Officer which reportedly moved from about $200 000 to $450 000 a month, nor that of the legal officer, and its information technology manager among other staff recently appointed.

The Ministry however refused to pay the increased emolument and back pay to the Deputy Chief Election Officer (Operations) when the Commission adjusted his salary to re-establish the former relationship between his pay and that of the Chief Election Officer. Current Affairs understands that the issue is to engage the attention of the court.

The Carter/Price formula

Parris said that giving effect to the notion of the permanence of the Elections Commission as a result of the silence of legislation in relation to the tenure of the commissioners including the chairman, all of whom were chosen by application of the Carter/Price (Former US President Jimmy Carter/Former Belizean Prime Minister George Price) raised a number of jeopardies.

The Carter Price formula according to Parris was derived in the context of a non-permanent commission under which the term of its members would expire three months after the date of the elections following their appointment to the commission.

Also, Parris explained that the Carter/Price formula "was derived to deal with a Commission whose behaviour would be overseen by a group of persons representing the interests of the political parties in Parliament immediately prior to the general election."

As a consequence he observed that the current requirements of "permanence" and of "autonomy" make the Carter/Price formula inappropriate as a mechanism for choosing members of such a Commission, including its Chairperson."

He explained too that it is anticipated that once the PSCCR has persuaded Parliament to adopt a particular electoral process, the elections commission "will autonomously and faithfully apply the letter and the spirit of that process to elections. [It] will also review its application of the process, apprise the PSCCR of the results of its review, and tender recommendations deriving therefrom designed to improve the process."

As a consequence he concluded, "In all these circumstances, the need exists for definitive legislative amendments, almost certainly including constitutional amendments, to provide a regime of rules, regulations, and administrative practices that could unambiguously ensure the achievement of the objectives of a permanent, autonomous, GECOM reporting to the PSCCR."

Parris also concluded, "... also, given recent experience with the mechanism of an Election Petition, bearing in mind the dimensions of both time and cost, it may be useful to establish an appeal mechanism to GECOM as a step prior to an approach to the final forum of the High Court."

New formula for constitutingthe commission

The question then is to find a method of selecting the members and chairperson of the commission which is insulated from the jeopardy of being manipulated by any majority and would result in the selection of a competent group capable of operating autonomously without partisanship in relation to any interest group, including political parties.

In Parris' proposal to address the jeopardies he pointed out that this calls for a commission whose members though nominated by political parties, civil society organisations, the University of Guyana and the Judicial and Human Rights Commissions would be nominees not representatives of the interest groups that nominated them. This he said would allow the interest groups to nominate persons who are not members of their organisations in accordance with criteria set by the PSCCR. Also he said that it would require the parliament to mandate the PSCCR to revoke the appointment of commissioners, since as nominees of interest groups, the groups would be unable to revoke their membership.

According to Parris the list of nominees should be no less than seven and no more than twenty-two, as account would be taken of persons who have been nominated by more than one group.

The persons nominated by the various interest groups, the constitutional commissions and UG would be required to elect from among themselves the seven members of the commissions, using the guidance criteria of the person's willingness to serve, to devote the necessary time required for the work of the commission, their personal integrity, familiarity with the electoral process and administrative experience.

The election process Parris proposes requires each nominee present at the Meeting, which will be chaired by a member of the PSCCR, to rank himself/herself and the other nominees at the meeting in accordance with the guidance criteria. The seven members with the highest-ranking scores would be elected to the commission with the nominee with the highest-ranking score being named the chairman.

Parris explained that because of the imposition of concepts of autonomy and fairness as opposed to representativeness in the composition of the commission, the procedure for choosing its members has to be fair to the candidates. "This is one of the distinctions that makes the Carter/Price formula inappropriate since it focuses on compromise, representativeness and on resolution of a problem between factions competing for influence at the level of the Commissioners of GECOM." He says that the proposed procedure, which is based on the "Borda count system" would achieve this.

He recalled that faced with a not dissimilar problem with regard to the appointment of the polling day staff, choices based on test scores were amended to take account of the alleged affiliations of the candidates for those jobs to the political parties.

Other proposals made by Parris provide for the tenure of the commissioners and the chairman to expire three months after an election and that within that three months the commission would be required to submit to the PSCCR a report on the just concluded elections based on a format recommended by the PSCCR of the previous parliament.

The proposals also require the new commission, whose members will be sworn in at the expiration of the term of the previous commissioners, to "conduct, immediately on its assumption to office, any necessary hearings related to any elections petition. The Commission's report on these hearings shall be presented to the PSCCR within a month of the Commission's establishment, and shall form a part of the documentation to be considered in the forum of the High Court in the event that an Election Petition is proceeded with."

Observers who have looked at Parris' proposals for constituting the commission are unsure about its acceptability to the major political parties. They are not sure that the political parties are prepared in the present political climate to cede control of the commission to a group of independent technically competent people. They point out that while technical competence is required at the level of the officials of the commission it is required less so at the level of the members of the Commission, which deals with general policy, even though its members would be required to have a knowledge of the electoral system under which the elections are held.