March 2 polls still on schedule

Even as final checks are still being made, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) said it remains on course to hold the March 2, 2020 elections and will be receiving technical support from the Commonwealth Secretariat for same.

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The Senior Electoral Advisers who will come to Guyana are Former Chairman of the Ghana Electoral Commission, Kwadwo Afari-Gyan; Former Chief Elections Commissioner of India, Dr. Syed Nasim Ahmad Zaidi and retired Chief Elections Officer of Canada, Jean-Pierre Kingsley.

At a news conference on Wednesday, GECOM Chair, Justice (R’td) Claudette Singh, stated that they would be sharing their expertise with her as Chair as well as to the Secretariat.

Added to this, the International Republican Institute (IRI) will be providing the Commission with technical support in the area of civic and voter education. The exercise is intended to ensure that the public understands its rights and restrictions when it comes to voting.

The commission is also discussing a location for the facilitation of Nomination Day. While City Hall was first considered, the issue of its disrepair was raised and the Umana Yana is now being looked at as a possibility.

Nominations Day will take place on January 10, 2020 and will see the 19 political parties contesting thus far each submitting Lists of Candidates, one National Top-Up List, at least six Geographical Constituencies’ List and the Regional Democratic Councils’ Lists that the party may seek to contest.

ID CARD COLLECTIONS

Meanwhile, regarding the 18,398 Identification (ID) Cards in the commission’s possession for a number of years, a total of 949 have been collected. Providing a breakdown of the same, Public Relations Officer (PRO), Yolanda Ward said that the highest number of collections came from Region Four with 387 out of 9,343.

Data for the other regions show: Region One – 35 out of 313; Region Two – 68 out of 548; Region Three – 202 out of 2401; Region Five – 75 out of 194; Region Six –92 out of 3,267; Region Seven – 21 out of 269; Region Eight—4 out of 124; Region Nine – 23 out of 263 and Region Ten – 42 out of 776.

Justice Singh said that several persons have been emailing and calling in to the commission to explain the situations which have prevented them or their families from collecting their ID cards.

While some of these individuals now reside overseas, the Chair told of a recent occasion whereby a woman stated that she had received a message urging her parents – now dead – to collect their IDs but, even though they are deceased, she could not provide their death certificates.

“I asked her to supply us with the death certificate, again, in certain creek areas like Mahaica Creek, Mahaicony Creek, Crabwood Creek, you would have several persons there dying [and] there are no postmortems from people dying from old age; the police would visit and that’s it, they would bury them; they don’t bother with death certificates and all of that,” Singh said, explaining the challenge.