Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo upheld his three-month deadline for elections when he met with President David Granger earlier today.
The two leader found consensus on the need for a new GECOM Chairman to be appointed as soon as possible.
Jagdeo and Granger agreed to work together to compile a list of nominees acceptable to the Head-of-State, so he can make his selection of the GECOM Chairman.
But the two sides could not agree on GECOM’s mandate once a chairperson is appointed.
Another meeting will be scheduled to address this issue, as government wants house-to-house elections while the opposition wants elections within three months.
According to Jagdeo, “erroneous claims”, most importantly, by Government officials about youths not being on the voters’ list should be discussed thoroughly. He maintained that continuous registration has been ongoing and a claims and objections period will produce a clean list.
“I said to him, ‘if the concerns are genuine, and we want to treat your concerns expressed as genuine concerns about credible elections, where you indicated erroneously that the young people will not be on the list or the list will be flawed without House-to-House registration. I would like to discuss at length to show you how we can have credible elections with just updating the list through claims and objections’”.
The Opposition Leader also asserted that as pointed out to the President “we had four elections that were held on this same list. In 2011, his party won the majority in Parliament. In 2015 he won the Government on this list. They’ve held two local Government elections on this very list and so they had no problems with the list before”.
While the date for elections was not discussed, the Opposition is sticking to the three-month deadline and any time further is seen as a delaying tactic.
“I believe that House-to-House registration on their part is a ploy to delay the elections. They don’t want elections in three months and so they know going to House-to-House registration will mean elections next year,” he positioned.
