Bharrat Jagdeo

Source

August 23 2019

If the Guyana Elections Commissions (GECOM) suspends the current national house-to-house registration process by the end of this month, the opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) believes that there will be enough time to facilitate elections by the end of October.

“I have seen a timeline worked out by our commissioners, which have all of the processes being followed, and puts elections by the latter part of October,” PPP General Secretary and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo told a press conference yesterday.

“I believe that October is a timeline because the commissioners sat and they worked at this and showed that without compromising any quality we can achieve this by the end of October,” he added.

While the PPP has been pressing for elections to be held as soon as possible, in keeping with the constitutional provisions attendant to the passage of a no-confidence motion against the government last December, President David Granger has maintained that it is GECOM that has to advise him on the date for elections based on its readiness. However, some government ministers have been indicating a date in December.

GECOM met on Wednesday but failed to come consensus on the holding of the polls, which were initially due since March in keeping with the three-month deadline set out in the constitution. With no decision as yet, the six members and new Chairperson Justice Claudette Singh will meet again on Friday to continue their deliberations on the issue.

The commissioners have received the decision of the Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire on GECOM’s contentious house-to-house registration exercise and made their proposals on the way forward from their respective interpretations of the judge’s ruling.

The judge has had upheld the legality of the exercise. Government has been insistent on the registration exercise being needed to sanitise the voters’ database in order to ensure “credible” elections in light of its concerns over a potentially “bloated” electoral roll. However, the judge’s ruling also stated that existing registrants cannot be excised from a new voters’ list unless certain criteria provided by law are met—that being by death or by specified means of disqualification. This has called into question the ongoing house-to-house registration process.

This newspaper understands Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield on Wednesday also shared his view on methods to prepare for the holding of the elections in order to guide the Chairperson on the issue before she reports to President Granger on the electoral body’s readiness.

Government Commissioner Vincent Alexander was asked on Wednesday if, given the tone of the meeting, the house-to-house registration will continue. He said that he felt that “house-to-house has not been thrown out,” before noting that it was the means he had identified to get a sanitised list. Asked if the claims and objections process could be used, he quickly replied, “That is not a way of sanitising.”

But Jagdeo said that Alexander’s position “makes no sense” given that the Chief Justice’s ruling pointed to the criteria for the removal of names from the list. “It is a pure nonsensical word to create the impression, in the PNC base, that the list is flawed and needs sanitising,” Jagdeo said.

He said that the Chief Justice’s ruling thwarted a plan by government to have a lot of names of persons from his party removed from the list. “They wanted to sanitise a lot of us from the list, so when Election Day comes a lot of us would have been sanitised and we won’t have had the right to vote but the ruling thwarted their plan to sanitise out of voting and they are in that little panic mode,” he said.