Dear Editor,
I am puzzled and amazed by Dr. Tara Singh’s letter captioned, ‘The opposition cannot produce evidence to show that the existing voters’ list is deficient (SN 11/18/22).
Dr. Singh claimed, “Under GECOM Chair James Patterson a HtoH registration occurred for 6 weeks when it was stopped. This process would have disenfranchised thousands of voters living and working abroad.” One therefore has to ask whether Dr. Singh is questioning the validity of the 1992 elections (touted as the first free and fair elections since 1964) that the PPP won, and in which thousands of Guyanese living and working abroad were removed from the Register of Registrants via house to house registration (H2H) as a prerequisite to the holding of those elections?
Further, is Dr. Singh questioning the validity of subsequent elections – 1997, 2001, 2006, & 2011 held after PPP supported periods of H2H registration when thousands of Guyanese living and working abroad, which according to his logic, were denied their “inalienable right to exercise their franchise”? Or, is he saying that when the PPP is in support of H2H registration, then, it is okay to deprive Guyanese of their “important and sacred … right to vote”? Editor, contrary to Dr. Singh’s claim that the “The opposition cannot produce evidence to show that the existing voters’ list is deficient”, it is evident that the PPP has exhausted their list of excuses for refusing to support overdue H2H registration, and has now made a full 360 as it relates to Guyanese living and working abroad and their right to vote.
At this rate, we can next expect to hear a call from the PPP for Guyanese living and working overseas be allowed to vote overseas. There is a pattern emerging in which the PPP advocates for electoral and constitutional changes, and then challenge those amendments (for example, two term presidential term limits) when they are no longer politically expedient. A pattern, which the ABCE countries should have recognised by now.
Sincerely,
Julianne Gaul