Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission, Dr Steve Surujbally has welcomed the Electoral Assistance Bureau’s (EAB) planned test of the Revised Voters List stating that Gecom is ready to assist the process.
Surujbally told Stabroek News yesterday that he “endorsed” the testing of the list because the issues with the list have been played out in the public ad nauseam.
He said that the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) was posted across the country and it contained the names of deceased persons as well as persons who currently reside out of Guyana. Gecom’s chairman said that he resented the accusations that the list was padded, stating that the word itself connotes malicious intent.
He said that when political parties use the word padded it simply implies someone is padding the list, “who is padding the list? It is certainly not me…At my age I am not going to destroy my integrity, I don’t think so. The CEO (Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield) is not going to tarnish his name.”
Surujbally added that Lowenfield was well-respected and endorsed by the commission and the political parties and that for the list to be padded it would have to be “a massive conspiracy”.
He stated that the fact remains that the numerous checks and balances assure that persons can only vote once regardless of the list’s size.
Surujbally said that “we know that people are deceased and on the list. I endorse them testing because they can go and find those persons perhaps in Brooklyn…”
Current legislation prevents the commission from removing names of deceased from the list without the relevant records being forwarded by the General Register Office.
The PLE currently has 567,125 persons on it, however Gecom is aware that the list contains thousands of persons who are currently living abroad or are deceased.
The EAB, chaired by Father Malcolm Rodrigues, said that due to time constraints it would do a limited test of the RLE in addition to observing the balloting on polling day.
In a statement on Tuesday, the election watchdog group announced that it will need the support of the two main contesting groups, and GECOM, for this test to be done rapidly and with quality.
The EAB, which has monitored elections since 1992, said that any civic-minded Guyanese, 18 years and older, who are neither activists nor candidates for any political party are invited to become impartial, objective observers in polling stations at which they are registered to vote. Interested persons can e-mail eabguyana@yahoo.com.
The Bureau in the past has done physical checks of some 1200 randomly, computer generated names and addresses.
Meanwhile, APNU General Secretary, Joseph Harmon, speaking on behalf of the opposition coalition told Stabroek News that “it is in the interest of the ANPU+AFC to ensure that we have a voters list that is credible.”
He said that the coalition was prepared to assist the EAB and that the opposition had already publicly ventilated its issues. He said that the opposition also acknowledges that there are legal limitations preventing the removal of the names of persons on the list.
The PPP’s General Secretary, Clement Rohee told this newspaper that the party has already written to Gecom on this matter and the views of the party will be addressed at a later date. (Pushpa Balgobin)
