The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has published an order for a 49-day-long Claims and Objections (C&O) process that will run from October 1st to November 18th, 2019.
While government and opposition-nominated members of the Commission had announced to reporters on Tuesday that there was a unanimous agreement for there to be an extensive C&O process for 35 days, the Order signed by Chairperson Claudette Singh caters for the 49-day process.
According to the Order, the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) will be published on or before September 29 and persons 18 years or older as of December 31st, 2019, can from October 1st make a claim to be added to the list.
Claims can be made for a 42-day period from October 1st to November 11th, 2019 both days inclusive. Objections to the inclusion of persons who may be dead or otherwise disqualified may be submitted to Registration Officers for the 49-day period from October 1st to November 18th.
Registration Officers shall begin to hear and determine objections and appeals on November 20th, 2019 before submitting all complete objections and applications for corrections to the Commissioner of Registration by November 25, 2019.
The order states that January 4th, 2020, will be the last day on which Commissioner of Registration Keith Lowenfield makes alterations to the PLE to give effect to the decisions on C&O.
Aside from the longest C&O period in Guyana’s recent history, the order provides for a larger gap between some statutory activities than is normal. In previous orders, hearings to determine objections and appeals have been held during the same period in which the objections were received as in 2018 when hearings started on March 6th, while objections were received from February 4th to March 8th.
In 2018, final alterations to the PLE occurred on April 8th, which means that Lowenfield had less than three weeks to give effect to decisions from C&O, while in 2019 this process is slated to take more than five weeks.
It is not clear why the Secretariat has proposed these changes. Efforts to reach Singh, Lowenfield and Public Relations Officer Yolanda Ward last evening proved futile.
Ward had however told this newspaper earlier in the day that a statement would be issued to guide registrants on what they should do during the process.
Stabroek News had reached out for an explanation as to how those persons who registered for the first time during the recently concluded House-to-House (HtH) exercise were to approach C&O since they will not find their names on the PLE, which will be issued in the new week.
Ward confirmed that while the data from HtH will be used it will not be included in the PLE which will be used for C&O.
Asked whether those new registrants should therefore make a “Claim” to be added to the list, Ward said that the Secretariat will issue a statement before October 1 to guide these registrants on how to proceed.
At its statutory meeting on Tuesday, the commission decided that a 35-day period of C&O will begin on October 1st, 2019.
Commissioners told reporters that the qualifying date for inclusion on the Official List of Electors during this period will be December 31st. Persons who will be 18 or over on or before this date are advised to check the lists in their communities for their names. Persons may also apply to have their address changed or object to the inclusion of a person who may be dead or otherwise disqualified from the same list of electors on which they appear.
Since C&O will begin before the completion of the encoding of data collected during the HtH process, the PLE will be drawn from the same database as the 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2018 voters’ lists.
According to government-nominated Commissioner Charles Corbin, the encoding of the data for the more than 370,000 persons registered during HtH will be conducted “parallel to” C&O.
“Any investigation originating from cross matching will also be conducted parallel to [claims and objections] and a list published after so there will be two lists at some point after the HtH data is properly cross matched within itself,” Corbin explained.
