by: Denis Chabrol
(Demerara Wave) – General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday dismissed the strength of a High Court case against the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) by the Forward Guyana Movement seeking to be included on the ballots for general elections in all 10 electoral districts.
He said deemed the case as one in which FGM leader Amanza Walton-Desir was seeking relevance. “Nobody pays attention to Amanza Walton and her dead campaign,” he told a news conference. “It’s just a lawsuit designed to draw attention to herself because she has no campaign,” he added.
Touching on the case, he questioned how could a political party be on the ballot paper if a list of candidates was not submitted. Mr Jagdeo said the FGM did not submit geographical candidates for those districts and so could not be on the ballot. “It’s non-sensical,” he said.
The 2nd Vice President of Guyana relied on Section 11 (C ) 1 of the Representation of the People Act states that, “Every elector shall have only one vote which shall be cast in the geographical constituency in which he is registered and votes in respect of the list of his choice, and that vote shall be counted to determine the outcomes of both the election for that geographical constituency and for the country taken as a whole: a vote for a Party’s geographical constituency list is simultaneously a vote for that Party’s national top-up list.”
