Dear Editor,
On Sunday October 20, 2024, GECOM Commissioner Vincent Alexander was the keynote interviewee on a PNC-sponsored ‘Nation Watch’ programme. He was interviewed by Mervyn Williams, a PNC member. The commissioner’s egregious punch line was framed as follows; “People should not acquiescence to any election that is not conducted after these things are implemented.” What followed during the interview was interesting. For example, Commissioner Alexander was lured by Williams into what is known as the ‘interviewer’s trap’ when a hypothetical question was put to Alexander suggesting that were the 2012 National Census to be used against the current electoral roll “it would leave huge question marks since that census placed the population at approximately 750,000 whereas the current OLE has 728,556 electors.”
By spinning his hypothetical yarn aimed at impugning the transparent process through which GECOM produces its electoral list Williams forced Alexander to belt out the political opposition’s well-worn narrative that, “insofar as the numbers are concerned, the OLE must be bloated.” At that point in the interview, any reasonable-minded Guyanese would have concluded, that both Alexander and Williams had introduced a level of disingenuousness in their discourse. Alexander knows that the Guyanese population must have grown over the years considering the high influx of Guyanese re-migrants as well as their children by descent who had fled Guyana under the PNC and APNU+AFC Governments. Apparently, Commissioner Alexander did not realize that by responding to a hypothetical question, he got ahead of himself by failing to recognize the difference in numbers established independently by the Stats Bureau and GECOM respectively over a twelve years’ period.
Responding to another loaded suggestion by Williams on the subject of biometrics, Alexander went off on a frolic of his own saying; “If you do manual fingerprints all are not good enough. This allows persons who are not eligible to become registered. And the people who cross-check such fingerprints cannot use them.” One is left to wonder why an informed Commissioner as V. Alexander would seek to mislead the public so brazenly when he knows very well what he said is not true. What are the facts? Whereas the quality of manually captured fingerprints may, in some cases, be weak, all fingerprints are used in the cross-matching exercise. My information is that GECOM has never had a case where any one person’s prints was so bad that they could not be used and had to be discarded. Attempting to be innovative and authoritative on the subject of biometrics, Alexander continued to persist with his flight of fancy on the subject stating; “When you do digital fingerprinting, you are able to perfect the cross-checking base because all of the prints are usable in the cross-checking and the system will reject a digital fingerprint if it is not good.”
He went on to say, “Anybody who has travelled, when you go to America if you don’t put your hand down properly to check your fingerprint they don’t accept it. If your fingerprint is not good that the system will reject it, so we will only end up with a reservoir of good cross-checkable prints. The same digital fingerprints can be used to authenticate the person as who he claims to be as the person on the list and that is the mechanism that allow for persons who attempt to vote for others can be rejected.” This is where Alexander exposes his own and his party’s efforts to deny thousands the right to be registered and, as a consequence, the right to vote and to elect a government of their choice. The fact of the matter is; no requirement for the digital capture of fingerprints can be imposed to the extent that a Guyanese who is eligible for registration/voting can be denied his or her constitutional right to vote because his/her print might be bad.
Furthermore, as regards the use of fingerprints for immigration purposes, Mr. Alexander must say if he knows of any traveler who, on arrival at CJIA or JFK were refused entry by the immigration authorities because their prints were rejected as a result of a bad print or a mismatch. Frequent flyers would have observed that normally, the immigration officer would request the arrivee to repeat the exercise on more than one occasion to ensure legibility. In some countries, retinal scans and/or fingerprints are used for immigration purposes. Leaving that particular issue aside, it is recognized that there are categories of persons from whom it will be impossible to capture digital fingerprints or whose fingerprints may have deteriorated over the years. However, be that as it may, it is unlikely that such persons would constitute an astronomically large number to influence the outcome of an election, in any event, no person in either of the two categories should be denied the right to register or to vote in an election simply because their prints don’t match as suggested by Alexander.
As regards Mr. Alexander’s suggestion that government should use biometrics “as a tool for the distribution of cash grants” it is best to ignore his suggestion since government has publicly provided Guyanese with the modus operandi “to assist with the “seamless distribution” of the cash grant. His intrusive remark aside, Commissioner Alexander, quite surprisingly, and unfairly complained that “biometrics has disappeared off the agenda of the Commission” and that the Commission is “moving from stagnation to slothfulness.” Then, as if waking up from a bout of amnesia the commissioner confesses “… I am now advised that that discussion which was scheduled for last week, we were given a guarantee that it is up for discussion this week.” Moreover, as if stuck in a complaining mode, Alexander went on to preemptively suggest that “GECOM has not demonstrated the will to change the current system to biometrics.”
As a matter of fact, the commission has as number four of its ‘status report of matters to be completed’ and on its agenda; ‘Discussion on Feasibility Study for the introduction of biometrics.’ Asked about government’s position on introducing improved biometrics at elections, Alexander speculated that; “there will be a pushback and postponements against biometrics both in terms of digital capture of fingerprints and the use of fingerprints for identification purposes at the place of poll.” Any ‘pushback’ on any matter is a matter for GECOM’s consideration and decision. As regards the discussion on the feasibility study on biometrics, for the benefit of the public record, the fact of the matter is that, the discussion was postponed to allow for the conduct of interviews of persons to fill vacancies for a Civic and Voter Education Manager (C&VEM) and a Logistics Manager at GECOM. GECOM plans to conclude the evaluation process before on October 31, 2024.
Meanwhile, the Chairman gave the assurance that the discussion on the feasibility study will be on the agenda of October 29, 2024. Alexander complained that “Manual fingerprints are problematic. You are not going to get the quality if you try to digitize them. They are not usable for the purpose of cross matching. If you try to digitize, you may amplify the problem.” How, and where Mr. Alexander got that from only heaven knows but then again verily, verily I say to Commissioner Alexander, all manually captured fingerprints can be converted to digital fingerprints.
Sincerely,
Clement J. Rohee