Delaying tactics

Guyanese are working all over the world. Jobs are hard to come by and so Guyanese have taken to going wherever they can find jobs.

Each of these non-residents is eligible to vote so long as they are registered as electors and have a local address. However, not many of them are going to risk losing their jobs simply to come back home to vote. But the likelihood of them not voting does not give GECOM the right to disenfranchise them by having their names removed from the list of electors.

The APNU+AFC has long telegraphed their intentions concerning the holding of general and regional elections. The ruling Coalition does not wish these elections to be held this year and therefore it is prepared to drag out the process until the end of April in the hope that GECOM will initiate house- to-house registration.

House-to-house registration is not a statutory requirement. There is an agreement by the old Commission that such registration could take place every seven years.

House-to house registration is costly and unnecessary. There is a system in place of continuous registration which means that as persons become eligible to vote, their names are added to the list of electors, during successive registration cycles.

With such a system, why does one need house-to- house registration? There is also a system in place for removing the names of dead persons from the list.

No compelling case has been made in recent times of hundreds of deceased persons being on the list of electors. The claim of 120,000 dead persons being on the list is a figment of someone’s fertile imagination.

Deaths are registered by the Registrar of Birth and Deaths. A list of the dead is compiled and submitted to the National Registration Office. The names of the dead are then removed from the list of electors.

It is impossible for there to be thousands of dead persons on the list of electors. That would point to gross incompetence on the part of those concerned, a charge which has not been made by any of the main political parties.

There is no truth in the allegation that the list is padded with the dead. If thousands of names of the dead were on the list, the political parties would have been protesting since last November when these parties were comfortable with the list produced for the local government elections.

It is true that there are persons who would have become eligible to vote since the last cycle of registration. And it is precisely because of this that there is a system of continuous registration.

Last July, the PPPC asked for the last cycle of continuous registration to be extended in order to capture those persons who are now of voting age but not yet registered. This request was rejected by GECOM on the grounds that there were statutory deadlines in relation to these cycles of registration.

However, this column had pointed out that in a previous election, the registration cycle was extended so as to ensure that as many eligible persons were enfranchised.

The litmus test of an electoral list is the degree of enfranchisement it facilitates. So to the extent that there are persons out there who need to be registered, those persons should be given an opportunity. But you do not need a new registration cycle or even house-to-house registration for this purpose.

This can be accommodated during the claims and objections period. It is not as if tens of thousands of persons are disenfranchised. The few dead whose names may still be on the list can be removed, and those who have become of age and eligible to vote can be added.

House to house registration is not at all necessary. In fact, it can create more problems because it can end up removing a whole number of persons from the list who may be working and living overseas but who are eligible to vote by virtue of being registered and having a Guyanese address. Those persons cannot be disenfranchised.

As a former Chairman of GECOM related, recently, there can be no mass voting by phantoms. There are systems in place to guard against such developments. The Polling officers have the folios with the photographs of each eligible voter at their polling station. And this is buttressed by the political parties ‘scrutineers’ guarding against ineligible persons voting.

But enfranchisement is not the motive behind the government’s wish for house-to-house registration. It is merely an excuse to delay the holding of elections until next year.