Thousands of enumerators took to the streets yesterday as the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) began a contentious house-to-house registration exercise across the country, prompting Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo to direct his party’s supporters against participating as he announced plans to seek an injunction to stop it.
GECOM’s Public Relations Officer Yolanda Ward told Sunday Stabroek that a total of 1,056 teams of two were deployed from 261 cluster offices in various districts around the country and they received positive responses from the public.
“We had some reports of purported supporters of the opposition indicating to persons that they should not register. That’s one of the major challenges we had today but the teams were still able to begin the process,” Ward told Sunday Stabroek as she explained that these issues appeared to be localised in certain areas of the country, with most complaints being received from communities in Region Six. (Region Six is an opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) stronghold and the party has been opposed to a national house-to-house registration exercise as it fears it will delay the holding of elections, which were due since March.)
