New voters’ list needed

GOING into another election would be problematic for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) unless there is a new voters’ list, said Chairperson of the Commission, Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh.

Guyana is anticipating Local Government Elections (LGE), which is due next year, and, while President Irfaan Ali has said that the elections machinery needs to be “fixed” before such is held, Justice Singh said another prerequisite would be the updating of the National Register of Registrants Database (NRRD) – used for the compilation of the Official List of Electors (OLE).

Although no official decision has yet been taken at the level of the commission, Justice Singh said it is necessary to have an updated register before elections are held.
“We have not taken any decision in relation to that as yet, but we are doing work in relation to our readiness because it is necessary that we have the register updated.
“Remember we had a lot of problems with that, so we have to look at those things… but, at the moment, we are looking at the elections petitions, as those will have to be heard,” said the GECOM Chairperson during an exclusive interview with the Guyana Chronicle, on Monday.

On August 31, the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) coalition, through its lawyer, Senior Counsel Roysdale Forde, filed the petition on behalf of Claudette Thorne, while on September 17, Attorney-at-Law Mayo Robertson filed documents on behalf of Heston Bostwick. Both Thorne and Bostwick want the High Court to determine the legality of the elections, and the results that led to the declaration, and allocation of seats in the National Assembly.
The case comes up again on November 24, 2020 for the preliminary hearing, and, ahead of this, the Commission has appointed prominent elections lawyer, Senior Counsel Anthony Astaphan to represent Chief Elections Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield.
And, while the commission’s main focus, according to Justice Singh, is the elections petitions, there is still need to update the register, since this had caused “problems” in the lead-up to the March 2, 2020, general and regional elections.

Prior to the elections, GECOM had undertaken house-to-house registration with the aim of creating a new NRRD, but this process had to be cut short by Justice Singh following the ruling of the Caribbean Court of Justice which upheld the no-confidence motion passed against the then APNU/AFC Government, thus necessitating the holding of Regional and General Elections in the shortest possible time.

The commission had then embarked on an extensive Claims and Objections exercise before preparing the Preliminary List of Electors.
The data garnered from the house-to-house registration process was merged with the existing NRR database, after which the OLE was extracted. The OLE had over 600,000 voters listed.
A review of this list, which is supported by Justice Singh, was also recommended by a three-member CARICOM team which scrutinised the national vote recount.
“As a minimum condition of electoral reform, the team recommends the urgent need for the total re-registration of all voters in Guyana,” stated the CARICOM scrutineers. The team also added: “It is clear that, given the state of the voter registration of the country, Guyana was not adequately prepared for the 2020 poll.”
Justice Singh said the commission will have further discussions on this topic in the coming days, but an immediate action would involve approaching Government for funding to update the register.

HOUSE-TO-HOUSE REGISTRATION
When asked about GECOM’s current budget, the chairperson said: “I cannot tell you much about the budget… remember we carried the election with it, and while there is still money, this election is next year.

“We still have the elections petitions and we are distributing ID (identification) cards, but we need to have the register and that register means perhaps house-to-house.”
Providing that the commission decisively chooses house-to-house registration as the method of updating the NRRD, Justice Singh said there would be concerns related to the Chief Justice (ag) Roxanne George’s ruling that the commission could only add names and not remove any.

Attorney-at-law, Christopher Ram, in an application filed on July 22, 2019, had asked the court to declare that the house-to-house registration exercise was in violation of the Constitution of Guyana and the spirit of the Consequential Orders issued by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) on July 12, 2019.
In her ruling on this matter, the Chief Justice determined that persons, who were previously registered, even if they now reside overseas, cannot be removed from the NRRD unless they are deceased or have been disqualified.

“That (the ruling) would be our problem going into another election like this,” said Justice Singh, adding that this is among a number of issues which need to be addressed.
Like President Ali, GECOM Commissioners, Sase Gunraj and Vincent Alexander, have both agreed that things need to be “fixed” before elections are held.
When asked about the need for fixing the elections machinery, Justice Singh said: “That is true, that is very true.”

She, however, maintained that the commission’s biggest challenge would be updating the NRRD, as this would set the foundation for holding elections.
“We have to give it some in-depth thought and of course, we have offers like from the EU and so, but we will have to see how we will go about it as early as possible,” said Justice Singh.
The European Union (EU) had welcomed the “democratic” conclusion of Guyana’s elections and had said it is prepared to assist with electoral reforms.

On the basis of the recommendations presented in the final report of the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM), the EU stands ready to support this reform process in cooperation with the GECOM and other electoral stakeholders.