GUYANA | GECOM has clear-cut powers but acts as if its 'hands are tied' says Roysdale Forde

GEORGETOWN,  Guyana, September 4, 2022 - As the Guyana Elections Commission, CECOM, makes preparations for the widely expected local government elections which are now due, Opposition parties, the Alliance for Change (AFC) and the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) have stepped up their call for  the provision of a clean voters list.

This is in light of the irregularities discovered during the 2020 General and Regional Elections and the comment by GECOM’s Chair at the end of the recount exercise, admitting that grave irregularities were unearthed during the recount, but advised these had to be addressed by an election petition.

Only recently, Attorney General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall SC, wrote to GECOM Chair Justice Claudette Singh, requesting information allegedly used by the (APNU+AFC) Coalition to support claims that the 2020 General and Regional Elections were flawed.

The AG is seeking documentation based on claims by the Opposition that deceased persons voted in the last elections; that there was multiple voting, and persons who were overseas on Election Day (March 2, 2020) also voted. 

The Opposition has two (2) petitions before the Court claiming that the 2020 General and Regional Elections were flawed due to a compromised voters list.

However, despite the calls from the APNU+AFC, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo insists that there will be no house to house verification held before the local government polls. This also seems to be the position of the Guyana Elections Commission, to which the Opposition has taken objection.

GECOM is maintaining that a recent ruling from the  Supreme Court provides that the removal of names from the National Register of Registrants Database (NRRDB) can only be done legally through the receipt of monthly reports from the General Registers Office (GRO) or through the Objections process where relevant persons can object to the inclusion of names in the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) whom they suspect may not be eligible.

But the Coalition’s Shadow Attorney General, Roysdale Forde  says GECOM must use its legal weight to put mechanisms in place to address the issue of a bloated list.

Forde says he does not believe that “GECOM has done all it is required to do by simply saying that we can’t take people off the list. They have to come up with a mechanism to ensure in respect of persons who cannot be taken off the list, that they put in place sufficient mechanisms to ensure or reduce the risk of multiple and substitution voting. It is their constitutional duty to that,” Forde said. 

He pointed out that Article 162 of the Constitution specifically says that GECOM is in charge and has power to exercise general directions and supervision over the registration of electors. 

GECOM has the administrative conduct of all elections of members of the National Assembly and also they have the power to issue such instructions and take such steps that are necessary or expedient to ensure impartiality, fairness and compliance with the provision of the constitution or of any act on the part of persons exercising powers, Forde said.

He explained that Chief Justice Roxanna Geroge-Wiltshire’s decision in relation to the removal of persons from the list, had focused on the question of residency and whether persons who are not found in a process of a house to house process can be removed from the list. 

She found in those circumstances that you can’t remove any person who you did not find at a particular location and that would include Guyanese resident abroad, who can’t be found, but cannot be removed.

She further said that persons who would have died can be removed from the list because the information would be supplied by the General Register Office (GRO), and persons who would have left Guyana, supposedly permanently, since that information could be supplied by the Chief Immigration Officer. “To me that is the extent of the decision and how it impacts what GECOM has to do,” Forde pointed out.

“What the case did not address is GECOM’s duty and constitutional obligation to provide to the public and to the electorate a credible electoral list.” He says this credible list must have on it only persons who are entitled to vote. 

As such, “any person who would have died, GECOM ought to have removed them from the list. Secondly, GECOM is under obligation to ensure that persons; for one reason or the other who cannot be removed, that they put in place the necessary mechanism to ensure that fraud cannot occur and substitute voting cannot occur.”

“They (GECOM) can’t simply say we have to accept a list with dead persons on it because we can’t take them off for one reason or the other; or they can’t simply say that we have persons on the list, we don’t know whether they are dead or whether they alive,” Forde insists.

The Shadow Attorney General noted that GECOM cannot just say that they are not performing a ‘house to house’, and refuse to engage in the process to even determine who physically, at this date, would have been in the country at the time of the house to house process, but can’t be taken off. 

Forde explained that the process would further help to identify persons who can’t be found, whether dead or alive or out of the jurisdiction. And where persons entitled to vote and are alive but absent, “what are we to do to reduce multiple voting.”

The Shadow Minister pointed out that  GECOM is vested with significant powers but is acting “as if somehow it is held hostage by the Government.” He said even though the Government and the opposition have three members each  on the Commission, “they’re not necessarily meant to be representatives of the political parties (PPP and PNC) to be held hostage to political positions” although that is what is happening. 

He said that is why the office of the Chair of the Elections Commission is so important, as it is supposed to be used to “drive consensus and drive good sense."

In light of the concerns outlined by the Opposition, the CARICOM Observer Team in its report on the 2020 elections, had called for the generation of a clean voters list. 

The CARICOM report noted 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 is clear that given the state of the voter registration of the country that Guyana was not adequately prepared for the 2020 poll. Yet circumstances beyond the control of the Commission precluded this preparedness.

It therefore behoves the Commission to create a new voter registry, especially  the suspicion that the 2020 was bloated, a suspicion which is not without merit."

Sources| Village Voice, Kaieteur News - Guyana