Surujbally must tender his resignation

Dear Editor,

The PPP/C’s calls for nation-wide protest against GECOM is justified on every sane ground. This body must all times do the right things and say the right things.

Recently, GECOM has displayed double standards and disrespect through its Chairman to the Guyanese populace. Dr Steve Surujbally, the GECOM Chairman has compromised his integrity and impartiality and exhibited utter biasness in the execution of his duties. This must not be allowed to continue.

However, the PPP/C must also share some blame for Surujbally’s relatively long stint as a Chairman. Surujbally presided over three elections. In 2011, the PPP/C should have supported the APNU’s call for Surujbally’s resignation.

This would have saved the occurrence of rigged elections in 2015. Such sensitive positions must be held for no more than two elections. Ironic, the same APNU will not support a call for Surujbally’s resignation this time around.

Guyana saw signs of Surujbally’s integrity becoming questionable, as some of his key decisions were clearly out of line. How can a Chairman discard the views of a key stakeholder? It appears that for every concern of PPP/C, he had a rebuttal.

In response to the PPP/C’s call for vetting Polling Day staff, Surujbally noted that this would not happen since it was not practical to the interest of the Commission’s operations to publish the names of elections day staff for public scrutiny.

Dr Surujbally further held that the Commission has guidelines in place to handle the recruitment process in a professional manner.

PPP/C General Secretary Clement Rohee had based his call for the public vetting on the “fact” that the PPP/C had seen in 2011 the “unprofessional and biased acts by a few Presiding and Assistant Presiding Officers towards PPP/C supporters, Polling Agents and Candidates, especially in Georgetown.”

Rohee described the refusal by GECOM to publish the names of polling day staff as a “very sinister and undemocratic act against the Guyanese people”.

He said that as a significant impact on the transparency and integrity of the electoral process, much emphasis must be placed on recruiting experienced, qualified and neutral persons to fill these positions through a transparent process.

The last elections saw a cancerous spread of nepotism and highly political E-Day staff. There was biasness in terms of ethnicity. Election Day staff posed on Facebook with Presidential Candidates.

Some districts, as the media reported, had one family dominating employment, taking key positions.  Again, these genuine concerns of the PPP/C were rejected by the Chairman.

All the nastiness and embarrassing situations could have been avoided if the staff were vetted. Many believe, there was collusion in the case of the fake Statements of Poll.

The PPP/C was alarmed at GECOM’s decision to collaborate with a self-anointed Guyana National Youth Council (GNYC) to implement a programme aimed at bringing out more youths to the polls.

Rohee premised the Party’s concern on two grounds: one, the fact that the organisation claiming to represent Guyana’s youth has no authority to do so; and, two, the decision to enter into a formal arrangement with a “partisan” body of youths or anybody for that matter must be a decision of GECOM’s Commissioners.

But Surujbally said the Commission will never endorse any “external” youth organisation, but like all the political parties, it wants young people to come out and vote on May 11.

The majority of the members on the GNYC expressed anti-PPP Government sentiments. A visit to their Facebook page will clearly show their support for the APNU/AFC coalition.

So it was obvious why this was a concern to the PPP/C. Instead, Surujbally saw nothing wrong about this move to collaborate. One will now wonder if they were doing voter education or subtle campaigning.

The above cases (and many others) highlighted why Surujbally must resign. His stance clearly shows disregard for the concerns of a major stakeholder. It showed also he had no concern and respect for PPP/C’s complaints – the party that was cheated out of office – when he was the Chairman.

Patriotic Citizen