The National Assembly yesterday passed legislation to facilitate the reopening of a new round of Claims and Objections to the preliminary voters list, but without the support of the AFC.
The main Opposition party the PNCR-1G supported the bill, after the government agreed to some amendments proposed by Opposition Leader Robert Corbin. These amendments, however, did not find favour with the AFC.
The start of yesterday’s sitting was delayed for more than an hour after Corbin and Chief Whip Lance Carberry met with senior members of the government side to broker a deal on the legislation. Deputy Speaker Clarissa Riehl presided over the sitting, in the absence of Speaker Ralph Ramkarran.
The National Registration (Amendment) Bill was piloted through the House by Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee, who said that the amendments put in perspective what both sides of the House wished to have regarding an issue that arose out of the need to have eligible persons not on the list registered.
“We need to get away from the blame game,” Rohee said. According to him, the “heart of the matter” is that there are between 6,000 and7,000 eligible persons who do not have source documents who need to get these documents in their hands.
“Let us, so to speak, bury the hatchet and smoke the peace pipe on this matter. And let us move forward as one…trying over the next 13 days… to encourage those who we know to get registered so that when the bell tolls… we will all be ready to contest,” he said. “And we will have a process that is so transparent… with which we are satisfied fully that no casting of aspersions on the legitimacy of the process will ever take place,” he added.
Corbin, in his address, criticised the government for its failure to consult on the legislation. He also criticised the government for its attitude to the concerns that he had raised previously about people being unable to access source documents. He also singled out the failure to set up a Special Project Unit in the General Register Office (GRO) three years ago to address the issue, even when the Guyana Elections Com-mission (GECOM) had promised to get foreign finances for it.
The Opposition Leader noted while the PNCR did not support GECOM reopening Claims and Objection in such circumstances, the party had suggested some amendments which it believed “would be palatable” and would provide certain safeguards.
According to him, the amendments do not negate the fact that the legislation is “discriminatory” and likely to still cause some persons’ constitutional rights to be infringed. “This legislation is discriminatory because it has failed to address the core problem,” Corbin said, stating that it was not just about the persons that the PPP wants to get on the list but about the persons who were unable to get their source documents up to now.
According to Corbin, Ramotar, in correspondences to GECOM on the matter, said that there are many persons who now have source documents who were not able to get registered. According to Corbin, this included some 725 persons in Region 1, 721 in Region 2, 280 in Region 3, 159 persons on the East Coast Demerara, 143 on the East Bank Demerara, 70 in Region 5, 814 in Region 6, 1086 in Region 9 and 302 in Region 10.
“The mischief is not extension. The mischief, really, is a system to make sure eligible people get documents. It can’t be done in 13 days and the only people that will benefit are those people that managed to have got source documents…but the majority of people who will benefit are those who have been facilitated by those who have been in control of that machinery that they have refused to adapt to help everybody else,” he said.
Corbin also moved a motion to ensure that the persons who are registered during this period observe all the necessary procedures.
His amendments made the legislation specific to the 2011 General and Regional Elections and inserted a clause to ensure that all registered political parties be given a list of all eligible electors that would have been registered during this new period of claims and objections.
‘Eleventh hour’
AFC MP Khemraj Ramjattan questioned the timing of the bill. “Why couldn’t this have been done earlier?” he asked, pointing to the fact that the administration must have known that here were 5,000 to 6,000 people that were not registered.
They must not come here and give the impression that they have a love for enfranchisement. We have been holding back local government elections year after year, after year,” he said.
According to him, there exists sufficient reason to be suspicious of such legislation. “You wait until the eleventh hour, July, now pleading for what is called a further 13 days. By the way, 13 days, that figure, they got some evil behind it, Madame Speaker,” he said, prompting laughter in the House.
He later contended that the government may be attempting to extend the presidential term of President Bharrat Jagdeo and may provide an opportunity to tap into funds that are expected to flow into Guyana as part of the US$250M Climate Change deal with Norway.
“We know that there was all manner of propaganda to get a third term for His Excellency…,” Ramjattan said.
Human Services Minister Priya Manickchand objected at this point, saying that this had continually been denied by President Jagdeo. “That don’t mean a thing. He had told us that he was legally married; I can’t find the marriage certificate,” Ramjattan responded, which resulted in the table-banging support of members of the Opposition.
Ramjattan pointed to several hurdles that could prevent elections being held by the constitutional deadline of December 28, 2011. Among these was the cross matching exercise for the fingerprints. He described the bill as “pregnant with the possibility of a postponed election.”
The AFC did not support the bill or the amendments, with Ramjattan saying that the amendments were “hollow” and “unprincipled.” “It is unprincipled on the grounds of discrimination, it is unprincipled because it’s the eleventh hour, it is unprincipled also because it does not meet the remedy that is required for the massive mischief we all understand it to be,” he said.
PPP/C MP and presidential candidate Donald Ramotar stressed that the government had no intention of extending its term. “The same people who have been asking for extension on the very eve of the Claims and Objection period, when they now are granted that position, we hear that they are now objecting to it and begin to see jumbie under the bed,” he said.
He maintained that his party’s push for a reopening of the Claims and Objections period was simply to allow for the thousands of persons who were unable to access source documents previously due to no fault of their own.
“This is not a decision for one village or one region but for the whole of Guyana,” PPP MP Dr Frank Anthony added in his presentation. “The decision is not for one political party but all parties interested in contesting the elections,” he said, while emphasising that it was more important for the ordinary man.
PNCR-1G MP Basil Williams said that his party felt that there was collusion between GECOM and the government which would have that body make “a sudden change” from a position that it had taken initially not to extend the exercise. He suggested that this decision could create concerns about GECOM’s credibility.
Meanwhile, Rohee, while wrapping up the bill, sought to explain his ministry’s involvement at an earlier state. Explaining why the government never acceded to GECOM’s request for a special project unit, Rohee said that the Commission wanted to make GRO an extension of the Commission. “We recognised from the outset that the Elections Commission is an independent body and as an independent body there is no way that a government agency or department could become either a department, or a unit or an extension of GECOM,” he said. He said too that even the issue of overseas financing was just a promise but had no specifics.
Further, Rohee said that at the time there was no problem with birth certificates. However, he admitted that the magnitude of the problem was underestimated.
“Every time you raise the bar for greater accountability and transparency, the challenges increase,” he said. He added that the government could not have asked for this before since it wanted to give the system a chance to work.
