Dear Editor,
AFC Chair Cathy Hughes told Demerara Waves Online News, on October 20, 2022 that her party is not going to participate in the 2023 Local Government Elections (LGE), if there is an Eligible Voters List that is bloated. This is an eminently reasonable position and it is virtually the final stand against having this bloated list being used in Guyana’s next General and Regional Elections (GRE). The rubicon line has to be drawn deep and wide to prevent this deadbeat practice of having an inflated list used in the LGE. If this line is crossed it will be imposed on the next (GRE).
There was a time when the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) would insist on having a clean voters list; that was a period when the race based voting system that dominates Guyana favoured the PPP. That period has ended. Tens of thousands of Guyanese who died in and out of Guyana are on the Eligible Voters List. When I’m Dead Don’t let me Vote. There is something sick and macabre about having the names of dead people being shoved into ballot boxes. The PPP will promote a diluted High Court decision that it is unconstitutional to remove the names of persons from the National Registry of Registrants (NRR) List.
Over one hundred thousand Guyanese have died, emigrated and have never returned to vote in any elections; yet for an impactful amount of them, their names show up in Guyana’s ballot boxes. The situation is untenable, illogical and easily corruptible. Imagine tens of thousands of people who have been dead for years or decades with their names on the Eligible Voters List. It’s a sad reality!
Sincerely,
Nigel Hinds
