THE MANDATE IS NOT DISCRETIONARY

THE
ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM • GOVERNANCE • ELECTORAL INTEGRITY.                                                                                                   

Editorial — Electoral Governance
The Mandate Is Not Discretionary: President Ali Must Act on Article 161

This is not a vacuum in the law. It is a vacuum manufactured by an Executive that prefers paralysis to a Leader of the Opposition it does not like.
The 592 Guardian | July 2026
Kaieteur News’s Peeping Tom column this week calls for the courts to “settle” the question of GECOM commissioner tenure, framing the dispute as an unresolved ambiguity that only judicial intervention can cure. It is a comfortable position for everyone content to wait. It is also wrong, and it lets the one actor with a present constitutional duty — the President of Guyana — off the hook entirely.
There is no ambiguity here. There is a refusal.

Two Provisions, Not One
Article 225, imported into the Elections Commission framework through Article 161(6), governs removal for cause: infirmity, misconduct, the disciplinary track that shields a sitting commissioner from being purged mid-term for political convenience.                                                                                    Nobody is invoking that provision against the opposition-nominated commissioners. Nobody has alleged misconduct. That is precisely why the “security of tenure” defence being raised on their behalf is a category error — it answers a question nobody asked.
The actual provision in play is Article 161(3)(b): three members appointed by the President acting on the advice of the Leader of the Opposition, tendered after meaningful consultation with the non-governmental parties in the National Assembly. The text names an office, not an individual. It has always named the office. That is why the same phrase recurs, unaltered in meaning, in the appointment of the Chancellor and Chief Justice under Article 127, the Judicial and Public Service Commissions under Articles 198 and 200, and the GECOM Chairperson under Article 161(2) itself.
Follow the logic of “permanent commissioner” theory to its end and it collapses on contact with its own premise: had the 2025 elections returned a different government, would anyone seriously argue the opposition-nominated commissioners should answer to advice tendered by a Leader of the Opposition who no longer exists in that configuration? The theory only survives because it currently protects the people asserting it.

Where the Obligation Actually Sits
GECOM’s own Chairperson has already said, on the record, that she has no power to remove or reconstitute the Commission herself — that the Constitution assigns appointment and removal elsewhere, and that the path runs through the President once the Leader of the Opposition tenders his nominees. That is not an unsettled question. That is the President being told, by his own Commission’s Chairperson, where his desk is.
Azruddin Mohamed, as the sitting Leader of the Opposition following meaningful consultation, holds the sole constitutional standing to tender that advice under Article 161(3)(b). Not the immediate past Leader of the Opposition. Not the Forward Guyana Movement, however useful a third seat might be to a compromise communique The office, as currently occupied, and no other.

The President’s instruments of appointment are not a courtesy he extends when convenient. They are a duty triggered by the tendering of valid advice.

Whether the appointing power is exercised promptly or withheld indefinitely is therefore not a gap in the Constitution — it is a choice made daily inside the Office of the President. A choice, this publication notes, made considerably easier by the fact that the current Leader of the Opposition is no friend of this government.

What the Courts Cannot Fix
Peeping Tom is right that political compromise cannot override constitutional text. He is wrong about what the text requires the courts to resolve. A judicial reference would take months, invite appeal, and hand every interested party an incentive to relitigate a question the Constitution already answers in plain language. What it would not do is compel a President who is already declining to act under clear advice to suddenly act under a court order he can also slow-walk.

Guyana does not have a drafting problem at Article 161. It has an enforcement problem at the Office of the President.

The remedy is not five more months of uncertainty manufactured for the comfort of incumbents on both sides of the seat — it is the President discharging the duty the Constitution already places on him.

THE GUARDIAN’S DEMAND
President Irfaan Ali must formally receive the Leader of the Opposition’s Article 161(3)(b) nominees and issue the instruments of appointment within thirty days of their tender, consistent with the duty the Constitution already imposes on his office. Anything short of that is not constitutional caution. It is obstruction with a legal-sounding excuse.
— The 592 Guardian Editorial Board