GUYANA | UK Ambassador Jane Miller OK's Guyana's old bloated electoral list for the next elections

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, November 13, 2022 -  Despite repeated calls from the Opposition Coalition, members of Civil Society, members of the Diaspora as well as Election Observers for the production of a clean voters list for Guyana, the United Kingdom seems to have given the government a green light for the use of the present controversal voters listto conduct the upcoming Local Government Elections.

A Demerara Waves publication story on Saturday quotes United Kingdom High Commissioner to Guyana Jane Miller as saying that “Guyana’s voters list was being updated and could be used to hold general elections with sufficient safeguards in place. She said based on existing rules Guyanese who are overseas could not be taken off the national database of registrants.”

“Anywhere in the world you got to make sure your voters list is regularly updated and that is what’s happening here so always the people who have died and people who moved out the country or whatever, you need to make sure it’s regularly updated and that’s the most important thing,” United Kingdom High Commissioner to Guyana Jane Miller told Demerara Waves Online News.

“The opposition A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) had hoped to solicit support from the American, British, Canadian and European Union missions here for a clean voters list. Those Western Nations had jointly criticised the several different declaration of results for Region Four by the Guyana Elections Commission and had joined other actors in the Caribbean and international community for the results of the national vote recount to be used to declare the winner of the March 2020 elections,” Demerara Waves said.

While The People’s National Congress Reform-led A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) is yet to say whether it would also boycott LGE in whole or in part, the Alliance For Change (AFC) on Sunday confirmed that it would be boycotting the March 13, 2023 Local Government Elections (LGE) because the voters list is bloated.

“The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Alliance For Change (AFC), after much debate, has arrived at a consensus that the party will not contest the upcoming Local Government Elections (LGE) without changes to the list of electors,” that party said in a statement.

“It is manifest that our electoral system is far from perfect, but we MUST not wilfully perpetuate a deception on the people of Guyana,” the AFC said 

During the National Elections in 2020, the AFC said there were multiple instances where dead people, the migrated, and a host of other shenanigans interfered with the electoral process. “We should not go there again! “

The APNU is yet to say whether it will contest the March 13, 2023 local government elections, but Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton has hinted at intensified political action or the filing of court proceedings to press its case for a clean voters roll.

The British envoy, Jane Miller, told Demerara Waves that “the real test is on the day of voting where there is a voters list with electors providing authentic identification. “From what I have been told, yes, I am satisfied. I think mechanisms are there,” she said.

Asked whether she thought Guyana needed a brand new registration, she said she would be guided by what she has been told but “from what I have heard, I think the list is good enough and I think we just need to make sure that there are those mechanisms in place to make sure it is regularly updated and verified.” 

Miller said she understood that the United States, Canada and the European Union all want to see that the voters list is properly updated and that “there are mechanisms in place on the day of voting to make sure that people are turning up only once and that they have identification that is on that list.”

According to the on-line publication, “Miller acknowledged that many persons on the voters list have moved overseas but are still eligible voters who could be weeded out by a fresh house to house registration. “It makes it very complicated, so going back door-to-door , you would miss out on the people that have moved overseas, maybe just for a few months, maybe a few weeks, maybe they have gone for a year. They are still eligible voters so that worries me,” she said.

Among the recently tabled amendments to election laws is one that now mandates the General Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages to dispatch the names of deceased persons to GECOM so that they could be struck off the national database of registrants.

The Guyana High Court has ruled that it would be unconstitutional to use residency as a requirement to be on the voters list. The Guyana government has rejected calls by the APNU+AFC  for the constitution and the relevant laws to be amended to allow for house-to-house registration and the use of biometric fingerprint identification at polling stations to prevent multiple voting.

The APNU+AFC has said that the voters list of about 682,000 names is bloated when compared to Guyana’s population of 750,000 persons, and so the list is bloated by an estimated 200,000 names which could lead to voter impersonation.

The Opposition as well as civil society have been demanding a clean list along with improved biometrics as allegations were made of persons voting multiple times using different identification cards, and as far back as October 2015, the PPP in opposition called for a new voters list to be compiled on the basis of a fresh house to house enumeration and improved biometrics.

Miller's refusal to acknowledge this flies in the face of a recent International Republican Institute survey that found 81% of Guyanese feel electoral reforms are necessary. 

In addition she seems to be ignoring the CARICOM Electoral Observer Team’s final report which said that  “as a minimum condition of electoral reform, the Team recommends the urgent need for the total re-registration of all voters in Guyana.  It therefore behooves the Commission to create a new voter registry especially given the suspicion that the 2020 register was bloated, a suspicion which is not without merit.”

The British Highh Commissioner is  also ignoring the Organisation of American States (OAS) Observer Team’s call for the Guyana Election Commission “undertaking a house-to-house registration exercise earliest.”

The new Preliminary Voters List (PLE) has 684,354 names which represents over 91% of the total population of Guyana.

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