November 13 2019
The 42-day Objection period of the 2019 Claims and Objections period ended on Monday with in excess of 13,000 objections lodged to the Preliminary Voters List (PVL).
Members of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) told media operatives after yesterday’s statutory meeting that while the exact number of objections has not yet been provided by the secretariat it is significantly more than the 500 which had been reported last week.
Opposition-nominated Commissioner Sase Gunraj explained that Chief Election Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield was not present to answer questions but that he and his colleagues have been informed that there are some 13,000 objections particularly at the Mahaicony and Fort Wellington Office.
Government-nominated commissioner Vincent Alexander confirmed this number and explained that the while the General Registrar Office regularly provides GECOM with a list of the registered dead the secretariat is finding it difficult to account for the unregistered dead as well as those deaths which had been registered outside the jurisdiction.
Lowenfield had raised similar concerns at Friday’s press conference where he explained that in Region 9 several death certificates presented were of Brazilian origin.
“We have been asked for advice and translation services since it is in Portuguese,” he told reporters.
Cleansing the National Register of Registrants so as to provide a “credible” Official List of Electors (OLE) has since last December been an ongoing source of angst at GECOM.
The most recent effort is the publication of the names of 18,512 persons who have not collected their ID cards.
The commission has directed that these persons must verify their existence by appearing at the nearest Registration Office with relevant documentation or find themselves on a supplemental OLE on March 2, 2020.
Chairperson retired Justice Claudette Singh has implored persons to show that they are alive but a significant number of these persons are resident overseas and therefore would not be able to comply with GECOM’s request.
Gunraj noted that he and the other opposition-nominated commissioners are concerned that this measure might have negative consequences for some voters.
“We have issues in the past where the discretion of Presiding officers has affected people’s right to vote,” he said while questioning the means of redress that is likely to be available to anyone disenfranchised.
He specifically mentioned a client of “public notoriety” who is currently a student out of Guyana and who previously encountered difficulties when trying to collect their ID Card. According to Gunraj the concern of this client is that they will be disenfranchised.
GECOM has utilized the publications services of the four daily newspapers as well as the Guyana Post Office to deliver registered mail to the persons affected by this new policy.
Asked if any consideration was made to having the former House to House staff physically visit these locations, Alexander said those efforts had previously been made.
“We had done some of that on a previous occasion. These people are being written to [and] given an opportunity via registered mail to indicate their status. That is much easier process than to try to deploy GECOM staff who are otherwise still engaged to try to go and find these persons physically,” Alexander indicated.
Meanwhile, the question of what use will be made of the data collected during the House to House registration process remains unanswered.
Chairman of the Commission retired Justice Claudette Singh explained to media that the use of the more than 370,000 registrations recorded in August was not discussed at this meeting since the second tranche of data is still out for fingerprint cross-matching.
She noted that the information is scheduled to be returned on Saturday after which a final decision on the use is expected to be made at the next meeting.
