The PPP/C, APNU, AFC and TUF have so far qualified to contest the upcoming national elections, while the Guyana Elections Commis-sion (GECOM) was last evening awaiting corrections to the lists of candidates submitted by the Fundamental Structure Group (FSG).
Another party, the East Berbice Development Asso-ciation (EBDA) also qualified to contest Region Six in regional polls, after scrutiny of lists of candidates that were submitted by seven groups last Thursday. The Horizon and Star party headed by Hubert Maloney has been ruled ineligible because it “failed to submit a “correct” logo,” by the deadline for doing so, GECOM said in a statement yesterday.
The statement said that GECOM is continuing to examine the lists which were submitted to Chief Election Officer Gocool Boodoo on Nomination Day last Thursday. Lists of Candidates were submitted by the PPP/C, APNU, AFC, TUF, the FSG, the EBDA and the Horizon and Star. “The examination of the Lists is being conducted by Mr. Boodoo and a team of designated staff including the Commission’s Legal Officer, from the Commis-sion’s Secretariat, towards ensuring that all of the Lists meet all of the statutory requirements in order for the relevant Political Parties to contest the Elections,” the statement said.
Mohamed Nasir of the United Muslim Party did not submit lists of candidates for his group hence it did not qualify to contest the elections. GECOM said that manual examination of all of the lists of candidates submitted by the various parties, resulted in the identification of defects in the lists submitted by four parties.
All of the concerned parties were informed of the identified defects and three of them have already taken remedial action, the statement said.
It said that another party, which Stabroek News has learnt is the FSG headed by Anthony Snow, had yet to submit corrections up to yesterday afternoon.
The deadline for the submission of corrections was midnight last night and GECOM said that at the time of the press release, it was unclear whether the party would meet the deadline for the submission of corrections.
Should the FSG fail to submit corrections by this deadline, it would automatically not qualify to contest the relevant elections.
Stabroek News learnt that the nature of the defects in the other parties’ lists included submitting photocopies of documents instead of the originals and initials instead of signatures.
The FSG submitted lists to contest the national top-up seats, and thirteen of the geographical constituency seats in six regional elections while the EBDA would be contesting the regional election in electoral district 6 only.
Meantime, the PPP/C provided a transcript of remarks by campaign spokesman Robert Persaud at a press briefing yesterday where he said that the party as well as its presidential candidate, Donald Ramotar have received a letter from GECOM confirming that their list has satisfied the requirements set out in section 15 of the Representation of the People’s Act.
“We are the only party to have not received a query from GECOM about our list and we are aware that other political parties did not initially satisfy some of those requirements and it is the role and certainly the task of GECOM to pronounce on such matters, in terms of their eligibility or suitability,” he said, according to the transcript.
Meanwhile, GECOM said that subsequent to the finalization and approval of the lists of candidates the Ballot Papers, Tally Sheets Forms and Statements of Poll Forms would be finalized and sent electronically for printing to Code Inc., a reliable overseas supplier which has over the decades supplied GECOM with such materials.
