“Unelected, caretaker” APNU/AFC regime paralysing Guyana’s economy – PSC

…lacks int’l recognition to access financial aid needed to tackle COVID-19

The Private Sector Commission (PSC) says it is the duty and responsibility of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to embark, without further delay, on a recount of the disputed results of Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), because it has been more than 15 months since the caretaker Government has been unelected, and it does not command the respect of either the populace or international community.

This situation is further compounded by the fact that, “business activity and, indeed, the country’s economic and social life as a whole (are) rapidly being paralyzed by the COVID-19 virus pandemic under an unelected administration which has demonstrated a less than satisfactory ability to manage the challenge of the virus.”
The Business Support Organisation (BSO) on Wednesday noted further that because the incumbent A Partnership for National Unity, Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) “does not command the respect nor recognition of the international community from whom the country desperately needs financial support to fight the virus, the longer this untenable situation prevails, the worse for the people of Guyana.”

According to the BSO, currently headed by local businessman Captain Gerry Gouveia, it has absolutely no interest in which of the contesting political parties is elected to govern Guyana.
The PSC is, however, “as one of the Accredited Local Observers, totally committed and duty-bound to ensure that a free, fair and credible election result is declared in the shortest possible time by GECOM.”
According to the BSO, the PSC holds this position especially given the fact that the APNU+AFC has now remained in office as a “caretaker” Government for some 15 months since a No-Confidence Motion was legally passed for its removal from office and the holding of new elections, and now retains office for some five weeks and counting since the General and Regional Elections have been held.
It was noted, too, that the statement just issued by the GECOM Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, that a national recount will take 156 days to conclude, “is adding a further five (5) months to the life in office of an unelected administration and caretaker President.”
The PSC noted that this is very much to the point taken by the PSC: that the recount be confined to District Four, where the declared results are genuinely in dispute, a position that was rubbished by APNU+AFC as disingenuous.
The PSC, in response, recalled that had the Region Four count “not been stopped by the fraud which had taken place within GECOM and which has not evidentially taken place in any of the other Districts, the election results would have long ago been declared and a new, democratically elected government would already been in place with the full support of the international community.”
The BSO further noted that it is not blind to the fact that GECOM’s commitment to act as the law prescribes to conduct a recount has been consistently delayed by the intervention of APNU/AFC election candidate Ulita Moore, in spite of, and in conflict with, President Granger’s invitation to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to facilitate the recount.
“The PSC must therefore ask, wherefore does the hypocrisy truly lie,” now that the courts have reinforced that it is the duty and responsibility of GECOM to put right what it has allowed to be wrong, “by concluding the elections in the shortest possible time.”