Following nine contentious months and one court action, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) will today be certifying the Official List of Electors (OLE) with 661,028 names. This list is expected to be made public by the statutory deadline of February 1.
Notably neither side of the commission appears to be content with this OLE as opposition-nominated commissioners are dissatisfied that data garnered through the House-to-House registration (HtH) has been included while government-nominated commissioners maintain that the list is significantly bloated.
“Clearly we are going forward with a bloated list because there is no circumstance under which a population of 750,000 plus with a school population of approximately 200,000 can produce a voters list of 661,000,” government-nominated Commissioner Vincent Alexander told reporters yesterday.
He explained that the National Register of Registrants (NRR) from which the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) was drawn included 663,365 names and that list published on October 1, 2019 contained 646,625 names.
Since then the names of 6,094 dead persons were removed based on information from the General Registrar’s Office, there were 68 names removed based on successful objections, 16,642 names were added from the HtH exercise, 4,258 names were added following claims.
At this stage the grand total in the NRR, Guyanese 14 or older, was 678,105 while eligible electors, Guyanese 18 years or older, stood at 661,378. A final alteration to the list was the removal of 358 duplicate names for a final number of 661,028.
Of that number 88,876 have had changes made to their addresses based on information collected during the HtH exercise.
The Opposition has repeatedly complained about this exercise claiming that it is not provided for in law.
Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo has argued that the statutory timeframe for alteration ended when the Claims and Objections period was closed.
During his weekly press conference last week, he referred to the then ongoing exercise as a “surreptitious resurgence of activities which should’ve never taken place.”
Jagdeo had said that his party was in possession of approximately 69,000 to 70,000 records of changes two days before the end of the RLE publication timeline.
He went on to argue that the magnitude of changes being made was concerning and contended that even if the Chief Election Officer who is also Com-missioner of Registration has the authority to make changes during this period it is “not of this magnitude.”
“No change except minor changes,” should be happening Jagdeo argued.
GECOM however disagreed and in a strongly-worded statement declared that corrections to the RLE are provided for at Regu-lation 37 of the National Registration (Residents) Regulations Act.
According to this provision the Commission of Registration, Keith Lowenfield, can within 21 days after he certifies the RLE make changes provided that he “is satisfied that any entry or omission in any list as revised pursuant to regulation 35 is incorrect through inadvertence.”
It adds that “in the course of such revision, he shall make or cause to be made the requisite correction to that list and such copy thereof as is open for inspection at any registration office and the Com-missioner shall give to the person to whom such correction relates notice thereof, which may be sent by registered post to his last known address.”
It is not clear if the more than 88,000 registrants affected were informed via registered mail but the Opposition Commissioner were yesterday provided with copies of all the altered records.
“We are only receiving today these inadvertent names and changes related to the HtH. This is unsatisfactory and is still a contentious matter,” Commissioner Robeson Benn lamented.
