General Secretary of the ruling PPP Clement Rohee was not forthcoming about the party’s possible rejection of the Official List of Electors (OLE) before national or local government elections are called and brushed off the General Register’s Office’s (GRO) role in presenting information that would lead to an acceptable OLE.
Rohee was grilled yesterday at the party’s weekly press briefing and he stated that yet another round of continuous registration may be in the works given the current dissatisfaction the party has with the Guyana Elections Commission’s (Gecom) handling of the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE).
When asked how another round of continuous registration would affect the date for either of the elections, Rohee said that the party would have to cross that bridge when the circumstance arose. Given the current political situation stemming from the AFC led no-confidence motion that could be voted on once the National Assembly reconvenes in October, observers have noted that the PPP is setting a stage to contest election results.
With Rohee hinting that the OLE could be rejected, the no-confidence motion against the government could have greater implications given that under the Constitution, if such a motion is passed, the government would have 90 days to hold a general election.
“At the end of the day, I don’t see Gecom holding to a list that the PPP—which is a major political party in this country—is objecting to. I don’t see that. It has never happened in this country since I was around,” Rohee said.
He continued that in the 1990s Gecom had to tell President Desmond Hoyte that Gecom was not prepared and certain decisions had to be made.
The party’s general secretary called on the need for a “clean and acceptable”, list which he said was currently not the case as there were too many dead persons still on the list as well as persons under 14 years of age.
Rohee reiterated that the party felt Gecom was not doing enough to verify certain queries held by the party over names on the PLE. Rohee said there were approximately 2,958 names of dead people still on the list and Gecom needed to address this issue.
Stabroek News asked why Gecom was being questioned over its verification abilities considering it was the GRO, which falls under the purview of the Home Affairs Ministry—Rohee’s subject ministry—that holds the responsibility to provide information to Gecom to have those persons stricken from the list. Rohee responded that the “GRO cannot submit anything to Gecom unless that name is struck from the list based on a death certificate that is issued.”
He said it was the relatives of the dead who needed to go to the GRO and register the death. The party’s general secretary became agitated as he was pressed on the issue by the Stabroek News stating that the party was doing its work and that the PPP could not do the work of Gecom. Rohee said that Gecom had a responsibility to “sort it out” with the GRO.
“We submit as much information as we can on the person or persons to Gecom and all we asking is for Gecom to do a verification. We give them the information, okay. Here is what we have found out, could you please go and check it out and verify,” he stated.
He insisted that it was Gecom’s responsibility to verify. “If they find that is not there job then we will continue to fight over that,” he added.
Rohee, when questioned about how the party had established that there was such a high number of dead persons on the PLE, said it was due to house-to-house campaigning and speaking in the communities where the persons are supposed to be attached.
He lashed out at the Stabroek News saying that this publication was portraying a situation in which the party’s call for list verification was unacceptable.
However, Deputy Chief Election Officer Vishnu Persaud had said previously that Gecom was confident in the accuracy of the list and that the commission is bound by the legal procedures guiding the removal of any name from the PLE or the National Register or Registrants (NRR).
Persaud, who is also the acting Public Relations Officer of Gecom, told Stabroek News that the GRO would notify Gecom of any deaths and those names would be “flagged as dead” on the NRR and when the PLE was being compiled those names would be extracted. He noted that the Commission had approved such a procedure that would only enable removals from the NRR and the PLE on the basis of records being forwarded by the GRO.
