Dear Editor,
In his letter of 23rd September in SN and KN, Clement J. Rohee fully exposed that he has no response to the fact that the PPP supported a new list and biometrics all the way up to the NCM in 2018; no response to the fact that the major election observers separately called for new registration; and no response to the fact that the Chief Immigration officer has verified that votes were cast for many persons who were not in Guyana on Election Day 2020.
Instead, Rohee advanced for our reflection the principle a party should adopt to determine whether or not a new list is warranted. The Rohee principle states that if a party wins an election, that party has no case or no need to ever question the list. Hence, he argued: “Has Mr. Lowe conveniently forgotten that it is the same list that he and his party complain so ashamedly about being ‘bloated’ that gave his coalition combined majorities in the National Assembly of the 9th and 10th parliament respectively?”
Let me swipe the legs from under this argument so that it does not resurface. No, Mr. Rohee, the list today in 2022 is not the same list in the 2011 and 2015 elections. Recall that the last H2H registration was in 2008. The National Register of Registrants was therefore three years old in 2011 and seven years old in 2015. Today, it is fourteen years old! It has lost its purity, shape and soul. It is not the same animal.
As I pointed out in my first response to Mr. Rohee, the PPP had agreed within GECOM to a 7-year cycle for new registration—which meant 2015 was the next due date. Accordingly, the Coalition government provided GECOM the required funding. But in 2018, the PPP double-crossed the nation —and we are where we are today.
We have ended up with the PPP/Rohee principle where the quality of the voters register is not determined by technical and democratic standards such as its accuracy and cleanliness, nor by its capacity to reflect the true will of the people, nor by its ability to win public trust. None of the above. The PPP/Rohee principle is all about what is convenient or advantageous at any given time for Freedom House.
Rohee and his party are delusional to believe that a massively-bloated voters list (soon to surpass the total population) can somehow become a settled and accepted norm in Guyana’s politics. It will not. Sooner or later, the situation will compel a clean voters list. The PPP must come to its senses to make that sooner rather than later.
Sincerely,
Sherwood Lowe
