The Representation of the People Act (RoPA) amendment bill of 2022 was passed in the National Assembly early Tuesday morning despite objections by the opposition APNU+AFC that it needed to be scrutinized by a Special Select Committee.
According to Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, the amendments to the RoPA are a result of events following the March 2020 general elections which saw attempts to rig the elections in favour of the then APNU+AFC government.
“These amendments are to prevent further abuse of the electoral system and promote transparency. It seeks to enhance, modernise and reform the democratic quality and architecture of our country and to make our electoral machinery and the registration process and the compilation of the list of electors more transparent, more accountable and more effective. The 2020 elections brought to light the way that the legislation in its current form can be subjected to abuse,” he said during the second reading of the bill.
Nandlall added that the bill attempts to examine, organise and compile the various scattered pieces of electoral legislation, allotting them to their respective places in either the ROPA or the National Registration Act.
One of the major changes to the RoPA is the division of Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), 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. The section also divides the polling districts Region 3 and Region 6 into sub-districts, each acting independently and distinguished by the names.
Section 6 of the principal act is amended so that every village or locality has an adequate number of polling places to accommodate the electors and a new section 6A is inserted so that Region No. 3 will be divided into the Essequibo Islands and River, St. Lawrence to Cornelia Ida, and the Hague to Arabio Creek sub-districts.
Region 6 will be split into three polling sub-districts: East Bank Berbice to Canje, Upper Corentyne and Lower Corentyne.
The amendment bill also requires that the Statements of Poll (SOPs), among other certified forms, be distributed to the Chief Election Officer, and the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission and provides for the Returning Officer to post an electronic copy of the SOP on the Com-mission’s website to be publicly viewed.
Hefty fines and lengthy jail times for election-related offence are also part of the amendments. The fines are in the millions while jail time ranges from three years to life.
“Even without amendments, this exercise has been great for our law revision process in that it has now, for the first time after approximately three decades, assembled all of our electoral laws, registration laws and related laws, and are now putting them into their respective homes so that they can be easily and conveniently accessed.”
Nandlall noted that a series of consultations were held in relation to the bill to incorporate recommendations and submissions from over 100 stakeholders, and stated that it has been subject to public scrutiny for a year.
This did not bode well with the Opposi-tion Member of Parliament Amanda Walton-Desir, who stated that given the importance of the bill as described by Nandlall it should be scrutinized by a select committee.
Two different things
“Public consultation and scrutiny by a select committee is two different things,” she argued.
She added that the government’s refusal for a select committee to scrutinize the amendments clause by clause is denying a significant portion of Guyanese their rights. Walton-Desir stated that this could only mean that the amendments are in favour of the current government and they do not wish to have loopholes found.
“We support electoral reform unequivocally…..What we will not support is the PPP/C administration coming to ram these provisions on the people of Guyana,” she stated.
She added that the claim that events that followed the March 2020 elections triggered the need for electoral reform is simply an excuse and that international bodies were calling for amendments to electoral legislation decades before the last election.
“The government is not serious about electoral reform,” she argued.
In response to the opposition’s demand for the bill to be placed before a Special Select Committee, Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat stated that it was simply a ploy to delay the process.
“Every single amendment is to ensure that there is transparency, and free, fair elections. These changes are being made to safeguard the rights of every single Guyanese regardless of which political party is in power. These amendments are a representation of good governance and true democracy and the will of the people. As a government we will continue to made amendments to strengthen every process, including the electoral process,” he said.
Walton-Desir also took issue with the amendment to include serious penalties for election-related offences, saying it is a strategy to ensure that those posts will be held by persons who are assured that the PPP/C administration will not take action against them.
The government’s rejection of a biometric voting system was also criticised.
“If they are interested in free, fair and transparent elections then why would they reject this issue of biometric system at the poll? Which person interested in transparency would say that?” she asked.
Opposition Member of Parliament Roysdale Forde also raised the same issue, saying that given the importance of electoral reform he thought implementing a biometric system would form a key part of the amendment bill, emphasizing that much more needs to be added to the ROPA.
According to Bharrat, while the government supports the use of a biometric system, it must complement the existing system.
The bill was passed after over five hours of debate.
