Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo has declared that if his party cannot stop the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) from using House-to-House registration data to update the voters list they must be given an opportunity to verify every change made.
“Nobody at GECOM should be making large scale changes to the RLE now that the statutory processes are over, but that is precisely what is happening. If we can’t stop these changes [we are saying] that all of the political parties must get a list of all the changes made so we can verify those changes when the OLE (Official List of Electors) comes out”, Jagdeo told reporters at his weekly press conference yesterday.
Claiming that House-to-House registration was an attempt to tamper with votes, Jagdeo contended that the presence of international advisors and observers along with the enhanced vigilance of Opposition- nominated commissioners have narrowed the room “to tamper with the list.”
The former president argued that without his party’s vigilance the “updating” could’ve been an attempt to disenfranchise persons by unilaterally changing their address in the system to a location distant from their expected place of poll.
He noted that as part of this continued “vigilance” he has brought to the attention of a Commonwealth consultant the anomaly of the current process where attempts are being made to include “unverified data” in the Revised List of Electors.
While Jagdeo did not name the consultant, GECOM had announced that Senior Technical Adviser, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan has met with the commission.
Afari-Gyan, the former Chair of the Ghana Electoral Commission is part of an advance team currently in the country. The team will be joined at the end of the month by former Chief Election Commissioner of India, Dr. Syed Nasim Ahmad Zaidi.
Meanwhile Jagdeo has also questioned that authority by which attorneys Roysdale Forde and Senior Counsel Stanley Marcus are purporting to represent the interests of the commission in the House-to- House registration case currently before the Appeals Court.
