The March 2020 General and Regional Elections has been repeatedly dubbed the “most controversial electoral process in Guyana’s post-independence history”, spanning five months of back-to-back litigation, at least one violent protest, and the hurling of rigging accusation against top electoral officials. But the process, as contentious as it was, seems to have had a proverbial “silver lining”. Those events that triggered challenges to the Constitution and legal, electoral framework have now, in fact, inspired proposed changes to the legal architecture with a specific focus on the overhauling of the Representation of the People Act (ROPA) – a piece of legislation that specifically governs the conduct of elections in the country.
Providing this perspective earlier this week was the Minister of Legal Affairs and Attorney General (AG), Anil Nandlall. During an interview aired on the National Communications Network (NCN), the minister said that the five-month period that followed March 2, 2020, intensely challenged electoral laws. He said that “exploitation”, “deliberate misinterpretation”, and “vulgarisation” were meted out against both the Constitution and other sacred legal, electoral components that were vital to upholding democracy. He added that the proposed changes are being made to ward of a reoccurrence of the aforementioned alleged transgressions.
“Whatever weaknesses were in the law, they were exploited to their hilt; wherever there was discretion, it was abused; wherever there was interpreted latitude, it was vulgarized; wherever there was an opportunity to bend the law to their repulsive end, it was exploited. These amendments, in the main, are intended to address those exploitations, absurdities, and vulgarities that were revealed during that five-month period,” the AG said.
His comments come on the heels of the circulation of draft legislation with proposed amendments to the ROPA. Guyana Standard reported earlier this month that some of the changes include the insertion of punitive measures to thwart electoral fraud with perpetrators risking life imprisonment and multimillion-dollar fines.
But would changes to the law be enough? Nandlall admitted that even the “best” laws can be “deliberately misinterpreted” to achieve ominous ends. Nevertheless, proposed amendments are a start, and the fulfilling of a promise made by his People’s Progressive Party/Civic government to ensure that Guyana is never again caught in the web of political deadlock and threats to democracy.
“It is recognized that no matter what law you put out there, if you have perverted minds, if you have tyrants, if you have authoritarians in charge of the system, they will pervert the best law and they will misinterpret, deliberately, the clearest of language in pursuit of their morbid end. So, legislation alone, and changes to the legislation alone will not be enough to fend off the type of attack which Guyana was under during that five-month period. But as far as possible, we made a commitment during that period to the people of our country, we made a commitment to the international community and we are dutybound to ensure that whatever weaknesses we can identify, and whatever weaknesses we saw being exploited during that period, to take the necessary steps to rectify and remedy those deficiencies,” he said.
