GUYANA | Opposition Maintains “bloated” voters list needs to be properly cleansed

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, October 4, 2022 - The Opposition APNU+AFC says despite GECOM’s extension  of its Claims and Objections exercise to give persons additional time to scrutinize the Preliminary List of Electors posted across the country and to make objections or claims where necessary, the Coalition is not happy with the process.

“We have long said that this list cannot be cleaned by Claims and Objections, that we need a clean voter’s list. It would appear illogical for us to be saying on the one hand that this list cannot be cleaned by claims and objections and then proceed to do claims and objections,” the Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton told a press conference today.

“We have a list of 682,000 people, we have a population of 750,000, it should be obvious to anyone that you cannot have a voters’ list that is 91% of the population, when you the government argue that there are about 250,000 children in school,” Norton explained.

The Opposition APNU+AFC has not and will not be making any claims or objections to the Guyana Elections Commission, Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton said.

Norton maintained that the list is bloated and the Opposition will not participate in a process to legitimize something it has been fighting against.

He said the claims and objection exercise is a non-starter for the Opposition and although it had its scrutineers overseeing the process, the party does not commit to the final aspect of the process.

“We need a clean voters list, a well sanitized list, and claims and objections with all its limitations cannot do it,” the Opposition Leader pointed out.

Norton said GECOM must once and for all make moves to properly clean the voters list, since such a demand was made by its own observers during the last elections.

Only recently, Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Retired Justice Claudette Singh told Election Commissioners that she has handed over more names of persons who the opposition said were either dead or absent from Guyana on voting day, March 2, 2020.

“Please be advised that I have dispatched the documents in respect of the claims made in relation persons who are alleged to have voted on March 2, 2020, being either deceased or out of the jurisdiction, to the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Office of the Commissioner of Police respectively, for the purpose of verification,” she told the Commissioners in a correspondence.”

GECOM said the list of names was received from APNU+AFC during the national vote recount and sent to the Registrar General and Chief Immigration Officer  for verification, but GECOM could not have taken further action or it would have violated Article 163 of Guyana’s Constitution that states that only the High Court can exclusively determine either generally or in a particular place an election has been unlawfully conducted or the election result might have been affected by any lawful act or omission. 

The coalition continues to maintain that there was voter impersonation in the March 2, 2020 general and regional elections where-in recounted results were declared in favour of the People’s Progressive Party Civic five months later in August of that year.

He said after the 2020 polling day, the coalition had submitted more than 600 names of persons to GECOM who were either dead or out of the country and could not have voted.

GECOM reiterated that it could not conduct internal investigations into allegations of electoral fraud that were reported to have occurred in the 2020 elections.