PPP reiterates Gecom far off registration schedule

The ruling People’s Pro-  gressive Party (PPP) has restated its concern that the Guyana Elections Com-    mission (Gecom) is far off schedule in the house-to-house registration exercise.

A few weeks ago the party had made public its concerns with the slow pace of the registration exercise and called  on the body  to speed–up the process.

Following these assertions, there was a media tour of Gecom’s different departments dealing with the exercise. During the tour Gecom justified the timings for some of the processes and the double-checking of all its information to ensure a transparent and new National Register of Registrants.

At a brief press conference yesterday, Party General Secretary Donald Ramotar told reporters that  his party wished to state categorically that it has no interest in giving Gecom  a “hard time”.

He recounted that prior to the commencement of the exercise,  Gecom had  informed the party’s Chief Scrutineer of its projected 591,297 persons who would be eligible to be registered and had stated that 190 days, commencing from  January 7, 2008 and concluding on July 4, 2008, would be required to successfully complete the registrations of these persons.

“It is against this background and the need to move to the other stage, that is, preparation for the holding of Local Government elections that the PPP is keeping a close watch over Gecom’s activities and targets set for these activities,” Ramotar asserted.

Under 40 days

Based on information made available to the party by the commission, Ramotar stated that as at June 1 Gecom  had completed 399,768 or 67.6% of the projected registrations using 147 days of the allotted time.

He stated too that there are still 191,529 persons out there to be registered with 43 days remaining from June 1.

He also said that Gecom has edited only 47.2% and encoded 29.9% of the transactions done in the field as at June 1. The party had raised concerns about the pace of this process as well and felt that the commission had enough staff to encode at a faster rate.

Contacted for a comment yesterday on the party’s concerns, Gecom Public Relations Officer Vishnu Persaud stated that these and other issues are currently engaging the attention of the commission. He told this newspaper too that the commission could be expected to respond shortly.

Ramotar called on the commission to now explain the low level of field registrations, particularly since the level seems to affect some regions much more than others.

Moreover, he said the commission should also explain why the editing unit is so far behind in handling  the  workload produced by the field registration and  why the encoding unit is not keeping up with the workload presented by the editing unit.

“Are these units all full-time and are their work performance being monitored regularly as with the field registration exercise?

How much work have these two units done on a weekly basis since the beginning of the exercise?” Ramotar queried.

Misleading

In light of the slow pace of work, as the party argued, Ramotar said Gecom should get its act together and stop making misleading statements that “everything is on stream.”

“Gecom is really very far away from having in place the national register of registrants database, hence no elections is in sight,” he insisted. Ramotar stated that Gecom cannot and should not seek to cast blame on anyone outside of its employ for its present state of un-preparedness for the holding of Local Government elections.

“Gecom does not have a database in place from which a voters list can be extracted … a prerequisite for holding of any elections,” he reminded.

Further Ramotar stated that he was reliably informed that the local government task force has completed its work, adding that Gecom should stop its attempt to identify scapegoats and get on with its work.