The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has tasked its Chief Election Officer with reviewing the work plan for the hosting of the overdue Local Government Elections (LGE) since the proposed date of December 12, 2022, falls outside of the legal timeframe.
The directive was related by Commissioner Vincent Alexander following GECOM’s statutory meeting yesterday. He told Stabroek News that while the Commission is aiming to ideally have the election held by the end of November, the work plan proposed by CEO Vishnu Persaud has a proposed date of December 12, which falls outside of the legal timeframe by a few days.
Both Alexander and government-nominated Commissioner Sase Gunraj related that there are proposed tweaks to the work plan for LGE before everything is finalised. Gunraj told Stabroek News that the Commission made some suggestions on how it wanted the plan expanded to accommodate the upcoming polls and those will be incorporated by CEO Persaud.
However, he would not go into details about what the proposed changes were.
Nevertheless, Alexander explained that while he did not stay for the entire meeting, the CEO did commit to reexamining the plan.
“Based on the current plan we are behind time. The proposed date is a few days out of what the law says. So the CEO will now have to revisit that and see how we are going to change that time and be ready,” Alexander said.
Last week, GECOM Chair retired Justice Claudette Singh said that the body is aiming to host the polls by the end of November.
“We just finished our continuous registration. And we are moving now to have a preliminary list and to move then to claims and objections…we are very much looking at the end of November, early December [for LGE],” Justice Singh had said.
The polls were constitutionally due at the end of last year but GECOM was not prepared.
GECOM embarked on a continuous registration process back in March, particularly targeting new applicants for the national register. The continuous registration cycle concluded on May 29, 2022, with over 49,000 persons being registered for the first time, with 28,149 being new registrants between the ages of 14 and 17, and 21,130 being new registrants above the age of 18.
At the beginning of June, the Commission’s Secretariat released a list of vacancies for “polling day staff for Local Government Elections.” The Secretariat decided to go ahead with the advertisement for polling day staff to be prepared for whenever the Commission announces a date.
Claims and objections
Last Tuesday, GECOM announced that it will embark on a countrywide claims and objections exercise from Monday, August 22. The aim of the exercise is to produce an official list of electors (OLE) and it will be conducted at all the GECOM permanent Registration Offices in the 10 Administrative Regions.
Yesterday, Gunraj said that the Commission received an update to formally state that the process commenced and is being conducted as planned. He said that a number of persons have already taken advantage of the process for a number of transactions.
“As you know we have started on the claims and objections exercise and we had a report to say that a number of persons have already applied for either new registration, transfers, change in particulars etc. So I want to encourage people to take advantage of this period,” he said.
During the Claims and Objections period, any person who will be 18 years and older by the October 31, 2022, and is a Guyanese citizen by birth, descent, or naturalization, or is a citizen from a Commonwealth country living in Guyana for one year or more, can make a Claim on or before September 11, 2022, to be included on the OLE, providing that he/she was never previously registered.
Persons desirous of making a Claim to be included in the OLE are required to visit the GECOM Registration Office responsible for their area of residence with the applicable source document(s), such as original Birth Certificate, valid Passport, Adoption Certificate, or Naturalization Certificate / Certificate of Registration to be registered for inclusion.
The Commission urged that existing registrants check the preliminary list of electors (PLE) posted in their respective districts to verify the accuracy of their registration information. It added that persons who are required to update their registration records, such as changes or corrections to their names and occupation or to apply for a transfer in relation to their addresses, would also be facilitated during this exercise.
GECOM had said that objections against the inclusion of names in the PLE can be tendered to the Registration Officer of the Registration Area from August 22 to September 15. Objections can be made by an elector who is listed in the same Division list/Sub Division list in which the person being objected to is listed.
Objections can also be made by approved Scrutineers of Political Parties provided that any such Scrutineer has monitoring responsibilities for the Division/Sub Division in which the person being objected to is listed. The relevant original document(s) such as an original Death Certificate must be presented at the time of the hearing to support the basis upon which the objection is made.
“The Commission is urging all eligible persons to ensure that they use this opportunity to be registered for inclusion in the Revised List of Electors (RLE) and ultimately the Official List of Electors (OLE) in order to be eligible to vote. Persons are also encouraged to object to the inclusion of the name of any person whom they believe should not be in the list, based on the legal provisions,” GECOM urged.
