The government has released the proposed amendments to the National Registration Act of 2000, which includes a measure to remove the names of deceased registrants, ahead of a planned public stakeholder consultation slated for next week Tuesday.
The proposed amendments were released by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance and would see the introduction of several new sections into the existing legislation. Chief among them is the criteria for the removal of names from the National Register of Registrants (NRR).
Removal of names from the NRR has been a contentious issue prior to the 2020 general election. Back in 2019, acting Chief Justice Roxane George declared that existing registrants could not be excised from a new voters’ list unless they were deceased or otherwise disqualified under Article 159 (2), (3) or (4) of the Constitution.
Currently, section 8 of the existing National Registration Act states “without prejudice to the provisions of section 15 (6), the registration of a person may be cancelled or altered in accordance with any regulations made on that behalf.”
Section 15 (16) says that the Commissioner of Registration shall only make changes to the NRR following claims and objections.
The main opposition APNU+AFC has contended that the voters’ list derived from the register is bloated with the names of dead people and that many of those persons voted in the 2020 elections, although there has been little to no evidence to support the latter claim.
The proposed amendment sees the introduction of sections 8 (a) and (b).
Section 8 (a) speaks to the list of dead persons to be sent to the Commissioner of Registration. It provides that the Registrar General of Births and Deaths, upon the request of the Commissioner of Registration, would send a list of all persons 14 years and older whose deaths have been registered. That is to be done once every month.
The new section 8 (b) outlines the process for the cancellation of the registration of persons who are dead. It states “…the registration of any person under this Act whose name is on the list of dead persons sent by the Registrar General to the Commissioner under section 8A shall be cancelled. (2) The Commissioner shall prepare a list from the central register for every division comprising names of persons registered in the division that are on the list of dead persons sent by the Registrar General and certify and send the list to the registration officer of the division.”
Registration officers in every division will submit the list of names of dead persons as a separate list to claims and objections under section 15 of the existing Act. The registration officers, accompanied by scrutineers, will visit the address of the person listed as dead, to verify the information.
“Notwithstanding any other law, the Commissioner may request more information from the Registrar General including information of the person who reported the death and how and where the death took place. (5) If the Commissioner, after consideration of the information obtained under subsections (3) and (4), is satisfied that the person is dead, the Commissioner shall direct the cancellation of the registration of the person who is dead from the central and divisional registers,” the amendment proposes.
The amendments would also see the Commissioner of Regis-tration being subjected to the direction and control of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).
Additionally, persons eligible for registration are either citizens of Guyana or Commonwealth citizens who are not citizens of Guyana and who are domiciled and resident in Guyana and have been so resident for a period of one year.
This replaces the provision which guarantees registration to any person that “have such other connection with Guyana as may be specified in the order.”
The amendments also provide for ID cards to be prepared, issued and distributed on a “continuous process, so that as soon as a person is registered under section 6 the person can be issued a national identification card as soon as practicable after the registration, whether or not it is an election period.”
A new Section 13A has also been proposed which would see persons facing the possibility of 5 years in jail and up to $500,000 fine if they knowingly submit false information/documentation during registration.
As it relates to the preliminary voters’ list, the Commissioner of Registration would now have to prepare one in June and another in December.
A new subsection was included in Section 16 that speaks to the control of the Commission over the Commissioner of Registration. Subsection 3 states “For the removal of doubt it is hereby declared that the power of the Commission to supervise the functioning of the Commissioner or Deputy Commissioner shall include the power to issue directions to the Commissioner or Deputy Commissioner in respect of the employment of any person by him in relation to the registration of electors.”
Government also proposed section 19B, which speaks to GECOM’s power to amend the law to address issues. It gives the Commission the power “…by order, make any provision, including the amendment of the said legislation, that appears to the Commission to be necessary or expedient for removing the difficulty; and any such order may modify any of the said legislation in respect of any particular matter or occasion so far as may appear to the Commission to be necessary or expedient for removing the difficulty.”
The proposed amendments also see an increasing of the amount of fines and jail terms for various offences outlined in the Act.
The draft amendments are a result of the attempts to rig the March 2 2020 general and regional elections, which saw a five-month delay between balloting and the declaration of the final results.
As a consequence of the events of the March 2020 elections, several former GECOM officials, including Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, Deputy CEO Roxanne Myers, and Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, and political party officials were charged with election-related offences.
Last November, the government released amendments to the Representation of the People Act (RoPA). One of the major changes the government proposes is the division of Region Four, the country’s largest electoral district, into four sub-districts – East Bank Demerara, East Coast Demerara, North Georgetown and South Georgetown – effectively adding a new section to Section 6 of RoPA, which deals with polling districts and divisions.
Among the proposed amendments are the introduction of hefty fines and lengthy jail time for several election-related offences. The fines are in the millions while jail time ranges from three years to life.
