While maintaining the long-held contention that the voters’ list is bloated and a new one is needed before any election is held, Leader of the Opposition Aubrey Norton also said that the APNU+AFC did not see the need to participate in the recently concluded claims and objections period.
The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) recently concluded its claims and objections period. The exercise is aimed at, among other things, facilitating objections to the inclusion of persons who may be dead or otherwise disqualified but listed on the preliminary list of electors.
At the end of the process, there were only 17 such objections despite the consistent claim by the APNU+AFC Opposition of a voter’s list padded with the names of dead and migrated persons. There had been the expectation that hundreds of objections would be made by the APNU+AFC given their contention.
At the Leader of the Opposition’s weekly press conference on Tuesday, Norton said there was no need for GECOM to embark on a claims and objections period since it “wasn’t tactical”. He explained that based on the PLE there are some 682,000 names and Guyana’s population is just about 750,000 so that means that the list is significantly bloated.
“So I didn’t see, we didn’t see the need [to make objections]. Secondly, we have long said that this list cannot be cleaned by claims and objections [and] that we need a clean voters’ list. It would appear illogical for us to be saying on the one hand that this list cannot be cleaned by claims and objections and then proceed to do claims and objections.
So claims and objections for us is a non-starter. They are non-starters [because] you cannot clean this list by claims and objections. We need a clean voters list. A well sanitized list and claims and objections with all the limitations cannot do it,” Norton maintained.
He argued that the numbers support the contention that the list is bloated. When asked why his party still did not, for documentary reasons, participate in the process, Norton contended that it would have made no sense for them to do so.
“…I assume you understand the claims and objections process. You will have to go and get birth certificates, death certificates, people and a number of other things [to support the objection]. It is virtually impossible to clean unless like this through claims and objection.
“We have said regularly that claims and objections cannot clean a voters lists as bloated as this one. Therefore we saw little or no value though we collect that information to go through a process of claims and objection,” he said.
He also refused to say whether the party would initiate legal action against the move not to have house-to-house registration.
Last week, GECOM announced that Chair, retired Justice Claudette Singh dispatched a list of names to the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Commissioner of Police to verify whether those persons were in the country on March 02, 2020. The names were submitted to the Chair, by the APNU+AFC, during the recount of votes following the March 2020 polls.
GECOM also said that said it has noted the “numerous public pronouncements calling for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to conduct internal investigations into allegations of electoral fraud that were reported to have occurred during the 2nd March 2020 General and Regional Elections.”
In this regard, GECOM reminded that Article 163 (1) b (i) of the Constitution of Guyana stipulates that “subject to the provisions of this article, the High Court shall have exclusive jurisdiction to determine any question whether – either generally or in any particular place, an election has been lawfully conducted or the result thereof has been or might have been, affected by any unlawful act or omission.”
It added that launching an internal investigation would mean that it would be encroaching on the powers of the Elections Court.
“The fact that the national recount had established that more votes were cast in favour of the People’s Progressive Party / Civic (PPP/C), the onus was on the APNU+AFC to file an election petition to determine the validity of the allegations of unlawful acts such as voter impersonation,” GECOM said.
In response, Norton told reporters on Tuesday that the APNU+AFC also puts the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Commissioner of Police on notice. He noted that failure to treat the matter with the requisite urgency would result in appropriate action.
“…we note that the GECOM Chair continues to insist that the commission cannot conduct an internal investigation and that ‘the onus was on the APNU+AFC to file an election petition to determine the validity of the allegations of unlawful acts such as voter impersonation.’ In so insisting, the GECOM Chair continues to mislead the public (deliberately, in our view) over the difference between the objectives of an election petition and the objectives of a systems and operations review.
“A petition is a judicial process to determine breaches of the law. Its only focus is on legality. On the other hand, systems and operations review are administrative exercises to detect and remove shortfalls in organizational effectiveness. Its only focus is on functionality,” Norton argued.
