The Amanza Audacity -Why the FGM Case Will Fail
A few weeks ago, we explained how the List system works and what to expect on Nomination Day. When the Nomination Day dust finally settled, six parties were deemed qualified to contest both the General and Regional Elections, as shown in this chart by GECOM. If you check the chart provided by GECOM as our main image, you will see that four of those six parties have ticks throughout all the chart while two parties, ALP and FGM, do not. GECOM’s colour coding could have been better but this is how you should read the chart. The yellow is meant to represent satisfying the National Top Up list qualification, while the blue represents the individual Geographical Constituency – together, they represent the General Elections and the top ballot paper when you go and vote. This ballot paper determines parliamentary seats and the Presidency. The green represents the Regional elections, that is the bottom ballot paper when you go and vote, and that determines the Regional Democratic Councils.
If your party ain’t get tick off in the chart for a particular region, in either General or Regional, your party name will not be on the ballot papers printed for that region. Check out this lil simplified ballot paper thing we do for y’all for the General Elections. Check it against the GECOM chart.
Basically, since everybody qualify (with all ticks) for the Geographic constituency of Region Four in the General Election, people in Region Four will see everybody on the top ballot paper in Region Four. ALP didn’t qualify for Region One, so voters in that region will not see ALP on their ballot paper. FGM did not qualify for Region Eight so voters in that region will not see FGM on their ballot paper. That means if you like Simona and you living in Region One, you sadly can’t vote for her. If you like Amanza, and you living in Region Eight, you can’t vote for her.
And that is the system that Amanda suddenly decide ain’t fair so she is going challenge it, two days before disciplined services vote and less than two weeks before the elections. The basic contention is that she arguing for a No Campaign Left Behind change of the law. Simplified, she is saying that since FGM (and ALP) attained the basic requirement for participation in the General Election, it shouldn’t matter that they didn’t get to field candidates for three regions, her party (and ALP) should still be allowed to contend in all 10 regions.
This of course makes no sense. First, the law requires geographical constituency candidates backed by nominators in the specific geographical constituencies. If, her party were to appear on ballots in regions in which she is not fielding geographical candidates and she got the most votes in those regions, then it would result in an absurd situation in which one or more of those geographical seats are not occupied in Parliament since the formula would have to assign the parliamentary seat allocations to the party with the most votes and the party with the most votes would have had no geographical constituency candidate. Or, if we could bruk it down, she want a chance fuh win Powerball Lotto when she only buy Play Wey ticket.
That speaks to the logical, or rather illogical, implications of what she is seeking. There is of course the constitutional and otherwise legal implications of what she is asking the courts to do. The Constitution of Guyana, as in most modern democracies, delineates the separation of powers, particularly between the Judiciary and the Legislature. What she is asking the court to do is to usurp the powers of the legislature to amend both the Constitution, which requires a two-third legislative majority (or a public referendum) and the Representation of the People’s Act which requires a simple parliamentary majority. This is structurally similar to the case brought by Christopher Ram on behalf of Vishnu Bandhu earlier this year and which was thrown out by the High Court. Or to bruk it down, she asking de Courts fuh jump out of bounds and do what de only de Parliament could do.
Finally, there is the audacity of the challenge itself. This formula determined how Amanza herself entered Parliament. It existed in 2020 when she found herself on the APNU+AFC list and went unchallenged as smaller parties faced the same restrictions. More importantly, it existed throughout her tenure as Parliamentarian, unchallenged, and it existed unchallenged when she submitted her list of candidates for Nomination Day. Like the complaints of the ‘Bloated List’, this has to be seen for what it is – preliminary theatre to excuse what will be an embarrassing showing for FGM on Election Day.
