Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton on Tuesday, August 9, 2022, slammed President Ali and the installed PPP Government for its non-support of a new and clean voters list. Referencing President Irfaan Ali’s statement last week which said, “The list is not the problem.” Norton said the President’s statement is pure hypocrisy and isolates the PPP as the lone objector to the necessity for a clean voters list while making it obvious that the PPP has no interest in democracy.
The party leader reminded that it was the PPP that made loud demands in October 2015 – five months after its defeat at the 2015 elections – for “ a new voters’ list to be compiled on the basis of a fresh house to house enumeration.” The PPP then, in addition, called for the removal of the GECOM Chairman, Dr. Steve Surujbally.
However, in July 2019, when GECOM commenced a House-to-House Registration process to create a new National Register of Registrants, the PPP challenged the decision in court, refused to designate scrutineers to monitor the process, and encouraged its supporters to boycott the registration process, Norton said.
According to Norton, the evidence seems to suggest that the PPP has become comfortable with a voter’s list that contains as many as 200,000 names that ought to be legitimately removed because those persons are either dead or no longer resident in Guyana.
“The Official List of Electors (OLE) for the 2020 General and Regional Elections contained 660,998 names, a number that is around 85% of the entire population of Guyana. No other country in the world has a voters list that is more than 80% of the population. A trend that will result in our OLE exceeding our population. ‘This is an absolute abomination!’, according to Norton. “A bloated list of electors will never win the people’s confidence in our elections regardless of whatever safeguards are instituted. It will forever remain a threat to democracy, the Opposition Leader warns.
The CARICOM observer group in their Report on the Recount (on page 50) noted:
“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, 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.”
Also, the Preliminary Report of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission stated as follows (pages 7 to 8):
The Mission recommends:
- Comprehensive reform of the voter registration system, along with the necessary legislative authorizations for registration, changes to voter lists, and submission of complaints about the exclusion or inclusion of voters.
- Undertaking a House-to-House registration exercise at the earliest opportunity upon completion of the election and periodically thereafter.
The Carter Centre final election report also took aim at the blotted OLE when it said: the number of registered voters seems disproportionate to Guyana’s estimated population. The Carter Center recommends that before the next election the government reassess and overhaul both the process and the technology used to create and manage the voter registration database.”
The Carter Centre also advised the nation to determine whether continuous registration was meant to end the practice of periodic house-to-house registration exercises. It also called for an assessment of the long-term consequences of the Chief Justice’s August 2019 ruling on residency.
The European Union Election Observation Mission to Guyana 2020 on page 16 of its report stated that the EU team, relying on 2020 registration statistics, highlighted the “… clear limitations in the ability of the existing continuous registration system to maintain an up-to-date, accurate register.”
“Support for a new voter register from the international and diplomatic community is on record and is clear-cut. When we factor in the support of the public and civil society organizations, the PPP stands alone, totally isolated on this matter. The Opposition parties are therefore not the only voices calling for a clean voters list,” said Mr. Norton.
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