With the addition of 6,000 new registrants during the just concluded continuous registration cycle, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has commended the Guyana Elections Com-mission (GECOM) for a successful exercise and maintained that countless Guyanese would have been disenfranchised without it.
The proclamation was made yesterday by General Secretary of the party Clement Rohee, who also expressed hope that GECOM’s success will extend to its upcoming claims and objections exercise.
“Further, the party welcomes recent public statements by GECOM officials indicating their readiness and level of preparation to hold general elections given the three months’ timeframe after the president’s announcement,” he went on to say.
According to Rohee, GECOM declared over 6,000 new registrants and almost 1,500 transfers during the recent registration cycle, which concluded on December 31. He added that GECOM recorded a total of 14,900 new registrants following the previous cycle of registration.
These figures, he said, affirmed the PPP’s belief that there could have been a large number of Guyanese who would have been disenfranchised had there not been another cycle of registration.
However, anyone who would be 14 years or older by March 31, this year, was eligible to be registered and it is unclear how many of the new registrants are actually of voting age.
Rohee also said the use of mobile units during the cycle worked effectively and positively impacted these figures achieved by GECOM.
He further extended appreciation to persons who participated in the exercise, whether by registering, conducting transferals or changing particulars and said that the onus is now on the elections body to ensure that these new registrants are properly verified. He added that their fingerprints needed to be cross-matched and the production and issuance of national identification cards should be done in a timely and efficient manner.
“GECOM must now work towards producing an Official List of Electors (OLE) that is properly sanitised and clean of any discrepancies. The PPP’s objective has always been to have a list that would not disenfranchise any eligible Guyanese, paving the way for another free and fair elections,” Rohee said. He continued, “The list must be correct, clean and consistent so as to ensure that persons under the age of 18, the dead and otherwise are not listed, minimising confusion… and speculation due to delayed announcements of the results.”
Rohee also said than an upcoming meeting with GECOM’s commissioners is in the works and the PPP has already identified several issues it would raise. These issues have been listed in a letter that is “soon to be dispatched to the chairman of GECOM,” he added.
“I’m requesting a meeting; we have to pose a date and time for the meeting and we’ll of course wait for the response from GECOM,” he said.
Meanwhile, Rohee said the party is yet to determine its presidential and prime ministerial candidates for general elections and shot down any speculations on the matter.
“I said already that when the party is ready to issue a statement on the party, the party will issue a statement,” Rohee stressed before adding, “We still have to confirm our presidential candidate so there’s no need yet to rush to a prime ministerial candidate when we haven’t confirmed the presidential candidate of the party.”
Though the general secretary has been tightlipped on the issue for months, in November, 2014 President Ramotar indicated that he was “confident” that he would be the PPP’s presidential candidate.
Shortly after the president’s proclamation, Rohee maintained that a decision was yet to be made.
