The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has decided to conclude its national house-to-house registration exercise at the end of this month as it moves towards the holding of general elections “within the shortest time possible.”
In a statement, GECOM said its Chairperson, retired judge Claudette Singh, at a statutory meeting today ordered that the registration process be concluded by month end and that the data collected be merged with the existing national register of registrants.
GECOM has recently been under scrutiny over its readiness to proceed with elections as a result of President David Granger holding to the position that it must advise him of a date for the polls. The elections are due as a result of the National Assembly’s passage of a no-confidence motion against the government last December. The constitution requires that elections be held within three months of the passage of a no-confidence motion against government, unless an extension is granted by not less than two-thirds of the elected members of the National Assembly. However, legal challenges to the validity of the passage of the motion in part stalled preparations.
GECOM’s decision to proceed with a planned three-month-long house-to-house registration from July 20th, based on a majority vote by government-nominated members and then Chairman James Patterson, resulted in a legal challenge by attorney Christopher Ram in light of general elections being required.
Based on his challenge, acting Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire ruled that the registration exercise is not unconstitutional. The judge, however, cautioned that existing registrants cannot just be deleted from the GECOM database unless certain criteria provided by law are met—that being by death or by specified means of disqualification. She has also said the Commission must be cognisant of the “extraordinary circumstances” under which it is currently operating, given the passage of the no-confidence motion against the government.
As a result, the decision called into question the rationale behind continuing with the exercise as “sanitising” the database of deceased and migrant registrants had been one of the arguments for it.
The full statement from the commission follows:
Data garnered from House-to-House Registration will be merged with existing National Register of Registrants Database
August 27 2019, GEORGETOWN – The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has acknowledged that the no-confidence motion passed in the National Assembly on 21st December, 2018 triggered a number of legal challenges in the local Courts and concluded with a ruling by the Caribbean Court of Justice.
Cognizant of all that has transpired over the past months, GECOM has an obligation to produce a credible Official List of Electors (OLE) in the first instance and ultimately credible elections within the shortest possible time.
After considerable deliberations at the Commission on the way forward regarding the conduct of General and Regional Elections, Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission, S.C., C.C.H at the Statutory Meeting of the Commission held on 27th August, 2019 has instructed the following:
- House to House Registration must be brought to an end. As such, Order 25 of 2019 published in the Official Gazette should be amended for the exercise to conclude on 31st August, 2019 instead of 20th October, 2019.
- Based on the ruling of the Chief Justice on 14th August, 2019 that House to House Registration is not unlawful and is constitutional, the data garnered from that registration exercise must be merged with the existing National Register of Registrants Database (NRRDB).
- In this regard, the Commission will move to ensure all arrangements for the publication of a credible Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) before commencement of an extensive Claims and Objections (C&O) exercise.
The Commission will continue to further deliberate on other matters of importance for the holding of General and Regional Elections within the shortest possible time and Secretariat will continue to implement a number of operations activities, in particular training of polling day staff and procurement of non-sensitive materials.
