By a majority comprising opposition-nominated members and Chairperson Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh, the Guyana Elections Commission has decided to undertake a five-day field verification of all the new registrants recorded during the truncated national house-to-house registration exercise.
“GECOM will do some field work which seeks to do a verification of the new registrants before they are committed to the list,” government-nominated Commissioner Vincent Alexander told reporters yesterday.
Alexander stressed that he and other government-nominated commissioners Charles Corbin and Desmond Trotman voted against the proposal, which they view as useless.
“It is a decision GECOM could’ve made, therefore it is not illegal but it is useless… It doesn’t make sense. The problem we are faced with, if it is a problem at all, is a problem of duplicates. This verification will not determine in any way whether there are duplicates or not,” he indicated.
According to Alexander, GECOM already has a process for dealing with duplicates, which includes an investigation and a hearing in some cases.
“Where there [are] duplicates and there is no evidence of fraud, the most recent information supersedes the other. There is no need for anything else to be done,” he stressed, while adding that he has reservations about whether or not the process can be completed in five days.
Opposition-nominated Commissioner Sase Gunraj viewed the issue very differently. Gunraj noted that at end of the fingerprint cross matching exercise paid for by GECOM, 37,000 supposedly new registrants were recorded from the 370,000 persons registered. However following this an internal process found 17,000 of those to be duplicates, while a further exercise carried out over the weekend has yielded 4,000 more duplicates, so the list of new registrants is now 16,000.
“It is something I have advocated because of all the questions surrounding the [house-to-house] data, its collection and more importantly what has been turning up recently when it has been exposed to scrutiny. The first round of scrutiny it was exposed to turned up 17,000 duplicates. Further scrutiny has turned up 4,000 more, so I believe that the highest form of scrutiny, house-to-house verification, is needed,” he stressed.
Asked if he believes the timeline is sufficient to conduct a proper verification, Gunraj explained that if adequate resources are allocated it is possible.
“During [house-to house registration], we were given information which suggested that as many as 20,000 were being registered in a day. We are talking about 16,000 across the 29 offices in the country… it’s possible,” he said.
Each of the supposed 16,000 new registrants will receive a visit from GECOM staff in the company of scrutineers from the two parliamentary political parties. It is expected that this process will conclude on Sunday and therefore not interfere with the timelines established for the holding of elections by March 2nd, 2020.
Gunraj noted that the information submitted suggested that the largest number of new registrants were registered at the North and South Georgetown Offices as well as the Coldingen office which administers the entire East Coast of Demerara.
Additionally after extensive discussion and prolonged publication of their names, those person who have not collected their National Identification Card will it seems no longer be “flagged” for extra scrutiny on elections day.
According to Gunraj, his understanding is that there will be no supplemental list or any other identification which can act as a tether preventing these persons from freely exercising their constitutional rights.
