Leader of the Opposition Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday declared that he still has full confidence in the chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Justice (Rtd) Claudette Singh but argued that she must realize how damaging recent events will be to the institution’s credibility.
“The chair must now realize that the institution will lose credibility if every single week they issue a press release which is misleading and has to be corrected the next day or orders which have to be subsequently corrected,” he said at his weekly press conference yesterday.
Jagdeo stressed that the recent statements “not only mislead the country which can lead to the undermining of the institution and its standing and impartiality but it creates a ton of grief for ordinary citizens [who] rush to comply with one instruction but a day later or a week later have to change tack.”
Specific criticism was levelled against the commission for failing to sanction the secretariat after an Order was published for a 49 days Claims and Objections as well as calling on all 600,000 plus registrant to verify their registration.
“We discovered that Mr (Keith) Lowenfield on his own inserted these two features into the order,” Jagdeo claimed adding that even when corrected the new order caters for 42 rather than the 35 days previously decided by the commission.
At the commission’s meeting on Tuesday the Chair voted with the government nominated commissioners to extend the previously approved time so that the commission’s decision would align with the contents of the order.
Jagdeo argued that this vote “baptized” the CEO’s actions and set a precedent of “accepting the principle that Lowenfield can change the decision of the commission on his own.”
He further argued that the actions amounted to more than a “benign mistake” as he believes the extra week was added to allowing for use of the House to House data in the National Register of Registrants (NRR) which is to be finalized by December 13.
“This is a big fight for us as we will never allow unverified data to go into the NRR. The House to House was not supervised,” he argued.
The People’s Progressive Party/Civic boycotted the House to House registrations process failing to provide scrutineers and has since argued that their absence from the process makes it illegal.
