Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo has declared that his party is prepared to “verify the names” of those persons who were newly registered during the House to House (HtH) process to allow all eligible Guyanese to exercise their right to vote.
“The parties and GECOM can visit these homes. It would only take a few days and we would not have a problem with them being added to the voters list,” he stressed.
Speaking at his weekly press conference yesterday, Jagdeo explained that during a recent meeting with Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Justice (rtd) Claudette Singh he shared his concerns that the HtH data is very flawed.
He noted that during experiments conducted by his party they found that seven of the nine persons registered in one home in Bartica have never lived there.
“We have multiple registrations. Persons registered at empty plots. So the list is padded,” Jagdeo declared.
He further stated that the “cross matching” of fingerprints collected during HtH with those already in the National Register of Registrants has produced approximately 60,000 unmatched entries a figure that could not possibly be accurate.
According to Jagdeo his party has been able to find the names of some of the “unmatched” on the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE).
“These are real people already registered,” he stressed adding that GECOM appears to be finding it difficult to isolate the new registrants.
“They might have to go through the names one at a time,” he lamented.
Four months after its conclusion GECOM appears to be no closer to deciding what to do with the data collected during the aborted house-to-house registration.
On Wednesday opposition-nominated commissioner, Sase Gunraj, told Stabroek News that commissioners could not decide on the utility of the information because the GECOM secretariat has not completed its investigation of the data.
He explained that the Commission which met for five hours had expected that they would be provided with fully analysed information, which would have enabled them to determine what role, if any, it will play in the election on March 2nd, 2020. Instead that were forced to give the secretariat additional time to do what needs to be done with the house-to-house information.
On August 27th, GECOM Chair Justice (rtd) Claudette Singh had ordered that House to House Registration be brought to an end. As such, Order 25 of 2019 published in the Official Gazette was amended for the exercise to conclude on 31st August, 2019 instead of 20th October, 2019.
At the time Singh explained that based on the ruling of the Chief Justice on 14th August, 2019 that HtH 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). There has however been no statutory declaration to give effect to this position.
At the end of October, the data generated from the house-to-house exercise was posted along with the preliminary list of electors (PLE) wherever PLEs were posted. No directions as to the purpose of the list accompanied it, or was published elsewhere. Chief Election Officer, Keith Lowenfield, and GECOM Public Relations Officer Yolanda Ward had offered no explanation for this line of action, but government-nominated commissioner, Charles Corbin, had said 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,” Corbin indicated adding that this information may trigger a statement of revision which is a normal process set out in legislation.
While Singh, appeared to support this position during her press conference earlier this month, Lowenfield stressed that since the list is not a PLE there could be no claims or objections filed in relation to its contents.
