GECOM’s double role

Dear Editor,
From all appearances, the discussion regarding GECOM and its true role in society will not go away, and I make this remark on the sole fact that there is a deliberate plan on stream to derail the democratic process as it relates to the conduct of elections.

The role GECOM has to play is very simple and straightforward, and has been detailed by yours truly and many other writers here. That role is to ensure that eligible voters are duly registered and the voting process is kept sanitised in order to facilitate free and fair elections. This process entails that those who are registered become eligible to vote, and are placed first on an OLE and have their names later fed into The National Register of Registrants (NRR).

Now, in recent weeks, we have been told there will be a change to this normal procedure for registration. The change entails that a person is mandated to carry an identification card for which that person can become an eligible registrant to vote.

Interesting! Hitherto, a person could have registered as well as been eligible to vote based on whatever form of identification that person chose, and which was rendered certified and legal. In no shape or form was there a decree mandating that someone was obligated to be in possession of an ID Card to be registered to vote.

To further enforce this blatant illegality, the PNC-controlled GECOM has issued a warning that persons not in possession of an ID Card would have their names struck off the OLE. Added to this new-found requirement, those persons’ names would be published in the four main dailies, which in essence is a name-and-shame exercise to force the registrants to come forward and claim their ID Cards.

In the words of GECOM Chairwoman herself, “This is a form of verification of the person’s existence.” So I would ask the question: Verification of what? Is this the best-known verification process she can come up with: that if a person does not uplift his/her ID Card, then that person would be struck off the official voters list?

This is the foolishness Claudette Singh, a retired judge, is promulgating. This takes us back down a disgraceful historical past of rigging and a rigging set-up. We are snugly back into the days when the commission, or whatever we could make of it, was an institution owned and controlled by the PNC.

Registrants were told whom we had to vote for, where, when and how. It started at the registration stage, where enumerators registered individuals based on the fact that they had voted for the PNC, or were considered potential proxy voters for the PNC on elections day. Persons were asked pertinent questions in regard to their choice of party, among other things pertaining to a rigging system.

All of the gory details of our onerous past are there on YouTube for all to see, so there is no reason to doubt the veracity of my claims.
No wonder GECOM recruited enumerators who went into the field without the scrutinising eye of the main Opposition party. Even the forms used in the registration process were an illegal document formulated by the PNC-dominated arm of GECOM.

No input from the Opposition Commissioners was entertained, it was purely a solo act of the PNC as they were back in the driving seat at the decision-making elections commission.

The chairwoman, only as a matter of window-dressing, back-pedalled and made the statement that no one would be disenfranchised, because their names would be placed on a supplementary list. Hogwash! Why remove the names of legally registered voters, name-and-shame them for no reason, then turn around and say we are going to have you placed on a supplementary list? Why waste millions in taking off names from a legal list, then place them on another supplementary list? Isn’t that madness? If this is not a nonsensical act, then the other reason is to create confusion on election day, when some of those very same voters would turn up to vote with their passports.

Would they be turned away by some idiot of a presiding officer, or be told that they are not eligible to vote?
These scenarios are likely to take place on voting day, all because the Elections Commission deviated from the legal and prescribed norms and embarked on a campaign formula to fulfill the demands of a party.

It therefore behooves us to believe that we are back into the old system of things, wherein a wholly democratic process has been kidnapped and held captive for the sole purpose of carrying out the wishes of the party in power. That purpose is crystal clear: the PNC wants to rig the elections.

Respectfully,
Neil Adams