The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has published the list of registrants generated from the contentious national house-to-house registration exercise but commission members are divided on how the information is to be treated, while the opposition has questioned its legality and called for its withdrawal.
Starting around 3 pm yesterday, Sunday Stabroek visited several locations in Georgetown and observed that lists of names had been published and displayed under the heading “House to House 2019: List of Applicants.”
The lists have been attached to the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) which is currently the subject of an ongoing Claims and Objections (C&O) exercise. The PLE was published via an Order signed by GECOM chair Justice Claudette Singh on September 26th. This order, which is attached to each copy of the PLE, advises persons that between the days of October 1 and November 11 they may, if they qualify to do so, make a claim to be included on the list or object to the inclusion of a person not similarly qualified.
The lists published yesterday are not accompanied by any order.
Sunday Stabroek sought an explanation from the Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield and GECOM Public Relations Officer Yolanda Ward but up to press time neither had responded to queries on the issue.
Government-nominated commissioner Charles Corbin, in an invited comment, explained that the transactions published should be treated with “the same procedure used during claims and objections.”
“The persons who were registered during the house-to-house [exercise] would need to verify that the information there is that which they recorded,” he stressed, before adding that this information may trigger a statement of revision which is a normal process set out in legislation.
According to Corbin, because of the peculiarity of the sequence of the activities in the current process, this list was published after the PLE when it is usually published prior to the preparation of that list.
He noted that the list does not need to be accompanied by an Order and argued that since the publication was in keeping with the decision of the Chair made just prior to her letter to President David Granger on GECOM’s readiness for elections, the Secretariat did not need to be given a further directive from the Commission.
“It was decided based on the ruling of the Chief Justice that the house-to-house data was legally obtained and that every entry should be posted for public scrutiny,” he said.
A press statement issued by GECOM on August 27th had indicated that the house-to-house registration exercise, which had begun on July 20th, would conclude on August 31st. The statement also indicated that the Commission would move to ensure all arrangements for the publication of a credible PLE before commencement of an extensive C&O exercise and that the data garnered from the exercise must be merged with the existing National Register of Registrants Database. The statement claimed this last provision to be in keeping with the Chief Justice’s ruling on August 14th, 2019 that house-to-house registration was not unlawful.
Last evening Corbin noted that in accordance with the decision of the Chair communicated on August 27 and solidified on October 4, the transactions published yesterday are to be treated as if they came in during the Claims and Objections period.
‘No provision’
However, opposition-nominated Commissioner Sase Gunraj, in an invited comment, took the opposite position.
According to Gunraj, “no decision was taken at a commission level in relation to this posting.”
“Specifically the commission has not decided what must be posted, how it must be posted, what the public must do nor how the public will be aware that it will be posted. The reality is there is no provision in law to cater for posting as done or otherwise,” he explained.
According to Gunraj, when he and his colleagues became aware that this directive had been passed to the various Registration Officers they communicated with the Chair expressing their concerns but have so far received no response.
“Efforts to contact everyone at the Secretariat failed,” he lamented, before adding that normally the posting of any List of Electors is a scrutinised process.
“They would write to the Chief Scrutineer of the various parties informing them that lists are about to be posted and inviting them to observe and scrutinise the process,” he explained.
The Registration Offices visited by this newspaper indicated that only GECOM staff had been involved in posting the list.
Using arguments similar to those raised by Gunraj, Zulfikar Mustapha, the Chief Scrutineer for the opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP), has called for the list to be withdrawn from public circulation.
In a letter to the CEO yesterday, Mustapha noted that the statutory process laid out in the Elections Laws (Amendment) Act has been triggered to revise the last Official List of Electors (OLE).
“In this regard the PLE has been extracted, published and is now the subject of a Claims and Objections exercise, as is mandated by the provisions of the Act and the National Registration Act,” he wrote.
Mustapha stressed that “there is absolutely no provision, in any legislation, which permits or authorises the publication of another list. The law provides for only one PLE compiled either from a registration exercise or from the National Register of Registrants (NRR). ”
“There is no provision in the law for two separate lists or for a merger of data generated from these two sources,” he reiterated.
With the PLE being generated from the NRR, the PPP argues that the only method provided for in the law for this list to be updated is by virtue of a C&O exercise.
“We wish to remind you that the electoral process is a statutory chain, with every link being the subject of express provision in the law. The step upon which you are about to embark is, therefore, at best ultra vires and at worst illegal,” it adds before demanding the immediate withdrawal of the list from public circulation.
The letter has been copied to Chair of the Commission with the expectation of “urgent intervention” on her part.
