Dharamlall – Local Gov’t Elections will be held this year

$4.1B has been budgeted for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to hold Local
Government Elections (LGE) this year.
Local Government and Regional Development Minister, Nigel Dharamlall, made the
announcement Friday, during his 2022 national budget debate presentation in the National
Assembly.  “We believe in democracy and we believe in people’s choices. We believe (that) for
our country to continue to evolve (and) for development to come flowingly to our people, that
we must have Local Government Elections… We have budgeted billions of dollars for Local
Government Elections (LGE) and we are going to have Local Government Elections (LGE) this
year,” Dharamlall told the House.
The minister also addressed reports that opposition nominated GECOM commissioners are
attempting to stymie the election process.  He dubbed this move as being connected to the
ongoing conflict between the coalition parties on whether or not they should contest the elections
as a collective unit.   “The PNC is in a quandary right now, so they are threatening the conduct of
local government elections. But we have budgeted billions of dollars for GECOM, in excess of
$4.1 billion and so the local government elections is on the cards for the government during the
course of this year,” Dharamlall said.
The local government and regional development minister said the senseless attempt by the
opposition is caused by their fear of losing their strongholds within the Local Democratic Organs
(LDOs). “There are some constituencies that they are fearful of losing and so they wanted to
remain that way until the next few months. But you know what, come to this Local Government
Election, you are going to lose a lot of Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs) and you are
going to lose more constituencies,” he stressed.
The Minister told the House that the opposition need not worry about this, as they are
accustomed to losing several battles to the government, as he cited the No Confidence Motion of
December 2018, as well as the 2016 and 2018 LGEs. He declared that since taking office in
August 2020, the PPP/C Administration had promised to host the LGE, once GECOM could
operate impartially to restore citizens’ confidence in democracy.
This stance, Dharamlall said taken is stemmed from the March 2 General and Regional Elections
(GRE) fiasco which dragged on the impending inauguration of the PPP Administration. He
added that while the local government ministry was prepared for LGE in 2021, the elections
machinery at GECOM was not in a position to proceed.