Dear Editor,
I refer to your front page news item that Gecom requires verification of the names of potential voters on the Preliminary Voters List (PVL) (SN Sept 30) and Ralph Ramkarran’s column (Sept 29). Gecom has issued a statement requiring voters to verify their existence on the PVL with a voter’s card or national ID or their names will be removed from the list. It is a most oppressive requirement that not even Forbes Burnham or Harold Bollers would have required. And we now are told that it was not a decision made by Gecom commissioners. So how did it make the press? Who issued it? The Chair needs to issue a clarification. There must be accountability.
That edict on voter verification is an underground way of bypassing the court’s ruling that residency is not a requirement for voter registration and that no eligible voter can be removed from the list. It is an illegal requirement and in defiance of the High Court ruling that registrants cannot be removed from the list unless death or transference is verified. Voters are already on a list through a legitimate registration process. The names of the dead should be removed but not the living who may not be able to visit a registration office to verify existence. There should be some way of making sure that those on the voters’ list are eligible to vote but Gecom can’t make it an oppressive act. There should be a simple verification process as done in the past not a mandate that a legitimate voter show up at a registration office to prove existence. The latter would be an attempt at voter suppression reminiscent of what was done to Black Americans, a requirement I fought against in the USA.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Vishnu Bisram
