The issue of persons living overseas and voting in local elections has dogged the nation for a long time. A video of former President Cheddi Jagan, founder of the People’s Progressive Party, is making the rounds on social media and reminds us just how long. In that video, the then Opposition Leader was speaking on the issue of the overseas vote. “Well, the whole thing is completely immoral, in the sense that. Never in the history of any country has there been such a big slice of the electorate coming from outside. They have no connection with Guyana, save that they may have been born here, they don’t live here, they don’t pay any taxes here, they don’t even know what’s going on in Guyana,” the late Dr. Jagan stated.
Today’s hot issue is a clean voters’ list and the fact that thousands of Guyanese who reside in the diaspora are still on the list. Leader of the Alliance For Change Khemraj Ramjattan speaking on his party’s weekly program ‘Alliance On The Move’ said in 1990 President Desmond Hoyte had put up a list of voters. Cheddi Jagan and Janet Jagan and Gail Teixeira and Clement Rohee and Feroze Mohamed said that that list is bloated by 89,000 names that are not living in Guyana.
Ramjattan stated, “Cheddi Jagan says he wants a brand new House to House Registration to fix the list because plenty people, he felt could impersonate those who are from overseas and who wouldn’t have voted. They’re gonna impersonate them and they could rig the election. And indeed we had a very ugly period of fraudulent elections and so on in Guyana and Cheddi Jagan tell the Carter Center we got to get a brand new list to take out all these 89,000 people who aren’t in Guyana anymore.”
He said that Cheddi Jagan called a residency requirement. “The PPP last week passed a law deleting the residency requirement from our elections laws, a shameless thing. So what Jagan and Janet have been fighting for, the PPP now delete from our law books. Because this list that they got has 200,000 people who are from America, Antigua, Barbados, and all over the place. Saudi Arabia got Guyanese and so on, all of their names are still on the list. It is a shame that these people now want that big bloat, 200,000.”
The veteran politician says the ruling PPP contends that what currently obtains is a good list. He says the National Recount shows that 4,229 people voted at the last elections who were not here in Guyana. It was an ugly election. It is obvious that there was impersonation. People use ID cards for other people. We cannot have a list that got so much bloat and we must not be persuaded by the argument of people like Anil Nandlall, Gail Teixeira, and so on, who must have caused Cheddi and Janet to turn in their graves because they fought for a pure list.”
