Election laws, several legislations to be amended by GECOM

DPI, GUYANA, Thursday, March 8, 2018

Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) retired Justice James Patterson said the elections body, “has discovered some anomalies in the entity’s legislation’ and has begun the process of amending these.”

GECOM’s Chairman, Retd. Justice James Patterson.

While those anomalies currently do not affect the workings of the commission, Justice Patterson said the situation requires the assistance of a legal draftsman. He said GECOM would not wait until problems arise to have them addressed.

“Not only election laws have to be considered, but a lot of legal aspects. We have to look at getting some current legislations amended to comport with common sense and in other cases with preemptive attacks that may be launched to vitiate the electoral process”, the Chairman told the Department of Public Information (DPI).

He said the commission, only on Tuesday, discovered another set of irregularities, “Right now, the legal draftsman has some of them on his desk.”

Fortunately, he noted, the commission has in its membership two lawyers and a legally trained draftsman and other members who have vast institutional knowledge of the agency. They will be working to remedy the situation.

While he could not, at the moment, share details about those anomalies, Justice Patterson noted that some statutory instruments have not been included in the agency’s recent legislations.

Apart from these anomalies in the legislation, the Chairman said the process has been running smoothly since he took office at GECOM.

He explained, “The job didn’t produce the dire prognostications that were prophesied. One of the reasons is because there was a work-worthy and competent staff, and particularly the CEO who has a vast institutional knowledge of the place. He is nursing me through the gauntlet I have to go through.”

 

By: Alexis Rodney

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