PNCR Leader Robert Corbin is to send the Registrar General lists of persons who have complained about being unable to register to vote because of the untimely delivery of birth and marriage certificates.
He also said that if the government and the GRO could deny that such a situation exists, it indicates that “they don’t’ have a clue to the nature of the problem.”
The main opposition party raised concerns about these difficulties at a press conference last Thursday and the Registrar General Greta McDonald subsequently responded that there was no backlog of applications birth certificates at the GRO. McDonald, in an interview with NCN, which was subsequently reported by GINA, said that for January, 25,300 birth certificates, 3,450 marriage certificates and 2,300 death certificates, including those processed from a total of 7,689 applications for birth certificates, 590 for deaths and 1,042 for marriage during the month, were issued.
Corbin said yesterday he is not challenging that 25,000 birth certificates were processed during last month, but he said that there were persons from various regions who had reported difficulties in accessing the source documents. He said that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has made similar observations. “GECOM, at the completion of the first phase of registration, had a list of names of nearly 30,000 people who turned up for registration and could not complete their registration because of their inability to access their source documents on time,” Corbin said. “I have read what the Registrar has said and the PNCR will make available to her lists that have been sent in by people in various parts of the country who are still waiting for it,” Corbin said. The PNCR leader declined to say when this information will be submitted.
Corbin said that there were difficulties not because of delays in the distribution of documents, but other bottlenecks in the system. According to him, in some cases births were not registered and sometimes details were not sent from the hospital to the GRO. He said that a way needed to be found to deal with these issues.
Earlier this month, in response to concerns raised by Alliance For Change (AFC) National Executive Mark Atkinson about persons not being registered, Public Relations Officer of GECOM Vishnu Persaud said that the body was aware that there were thousands of young people who would be of voting age, with respect to the upcoming elections, who could not apply for registration because they were/are not in possession of birth certificates, since their births were never registered. Despite raising the matter at several levels, including the Minister of Home Affairs and the General Registrar, their representations have not borne the desired fruits, he had said.
Last week, President Bharrat Jagdeo promised to investigate these concerns raised by the PNCR.
“If people are not registered because of some fault of some government agency or GECOM, that’s a legitimate concern and I will look into it and address it,” he said. “I will have concerns about that too, not just the opposition if that were the case. I’ll have to examine that and whatever it takes to remedy that situation, we should all work urgently to get that done within the constitutional time frame,” he continued.
Last Thursday, the PNCR had said that a team led by its General Secretary Oscar Clarke met the chairman and commissioners of GECOM to discuss matters of concern, following the conclusion of the continuous registration process.
During this meeting, issues of mutual interest were discussed, including “the difficulty faced by some eligible persons in being registered because of their inability to obtain, in a timely manner, the relevant source documents such as birth and marriage certificates from the GRO.”
The PNCR had said it appreciated the concerns expressed by the chairman and other members of GECOM on this matter and “the efforts reportedly made so far to encourage the administration to implement procedures to remove this difficulty. “GECOM, however, cannot abdicate its overall responsibility for the conduct of free, fair and transparent elections,” the party added. “The inability of eligible persons to register affects their constitutional right to participate in the decision-making process of the state and cannot be dismissed as trivial.” According to the party, both the government and GECOM “have a duty to ensure that all steps are taken to have all eligible Guyanese registered” and thereby allow them to vote at elections.
