THE People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) is calling out the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) on its push for the estimated 25,000 persons who have not uplifted their National Identification cards to still be included in the Official List of Electors (OLE), calling it another of the party’s plot to ensure illegal voters remain on the list for the March 2020 elections.

Chairing the party’s weekly press conference last Friday, PNC executive, Aubrey Norton, questioned the reasoning behind why the PPP is fighting so hard to ensure that persons who have not voted, or shown themselves to even exist since 2008, still have their names included on the OLE for the March 02, 2020 elections.

“The truth is the PPP wants a bloated electoral list that would give Guyanese a dishonest election, and which would give the people a government they cannot trust. What you’re looking at is the PPP’s plot to ensure that the list is cleaned at minimum and that they maintain their phantoms so it [elections] can be rigged,” Norton asserted.

“They are desperate to keep tens of thousands of voters, who it cannot even be proven exist, on the electoral list. The question is ‘why?’. They say it will disenfranchise people, but people who do not exist cannot be disenfranchised. The PPP is not bothered about disenfranchising people; it was the PPP who stood against house to house registration in a move that would’ve disenfranchised thousands of Guyanese youths.”

Norton said if the PPP/C truly believed the persons who have not uplifted their ID cards are existing voters, then they should instead encourage those persons to complete the simple task of showing themselves.

“We know for a fact that many of them are non-existent. If these people exist, tell me what is wrong with them going and collect the ID card? But because they don’t exist the PPP is trying to come up with other arguments for why they shouldn’t come off,” Norton related.

“We have argued consistently that the PPP consistently padded the list and we went to the previous elections with very padded lists. We see this as a mechanism to ensure the PPP can rig in their areas, so we will vigorously oppose it. The GECOM chairman has made it clear that it is within the confines of the law, and since it is a legal activity we support it and we believe it will go a far way in ensuring that when elections are held it is a true elections of the people’s will, rather than some concocted mechanism left by the PPP when the people of Guyana voted them out of office.”

It was last Tuesday the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) officially voted to have the names of approximately 25,000, who have not shown themselves to exist for over a decade now, to prove that they exist or be struck off the Official List of Electors (OLE). The decision was handed down by GECOM Chairman, Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh

Leader of the Opposition, and Chairman of the PPP, Bharat Jagdeo, has since declared that his party is against the move, noting that since electors do not require an ID card to vote, the absence of uplifting the ID card is not related to a person’s right to vote, and therefore should have no standing in their removal from the OLE.

GECOM Commissioner Vincent Alexander, however, explains that the issue is not about persons not having uplifted their ID cards, but that since 2008 they have not shown that they existed. He says in that sense their lack of proving they exist is simply the basis for an objection to their inclusion on the list.

“It’s like an objection. So, the issue is not the ID card, the issue is that these persons, since 2008 and beyond 2008 have not, in any way, presented themselves to be present; to be known; to be alive; to be existing; to be resident. And, in calling them, writing to them gives us the opportunity to make a determination,” Alexander had said when the issue had first come to fore.

The persons are not being removed from the list without being given a chance to show themselves, however, or without proactive efforts being made to contact them. The persons would be given 21 days to uplift their ID cards, their names will also be published in the newspapers, and notices will be sent to them via registered mail, to their listed addresses.

The removal of these persons should they fail to prove they exist, is among the GECOM’s measures to verify and sanitise the OLE, given that the Commission had to cut short a planned house to house registration exercise, which would have been the ultimate way of verifying electors on the list.

Notwithstanding their removal from the OLE, the person’s name would remain on the National Register of Registrants Database (NRRDB).
Justice Singh’s decision was in keeping with the decision of the Chief Justice (ag), Roxane George-Wiltshire in a case challenging the house to house registration exercise, which had begun on July 20, and was scheduled to run until October 20, but ended on August 31 instead. In her August 14, 2019 decision, the Chief Justice, in legitimatising the process of House-to-House Registration, said that given the urgent need for elections, the Elections Commission may have to consider other forms of verification.

In lieu of the truncated house to house registration, GECOM implemented a Claims and Objections period, to update the OLE.
Norton reiterated his party’s position, that house to house registration would have been the only means of delivering a valid OLE. Norton further pointed out that even with the Claims and Objections, many illegal voters may still remain on the OLE at the March 02, 2020 elections.

“Claims and objections will not give you a true picture of the phantoms on the list because of the nature of claims and objections. We have consistently argued that House to House registration is the best way to clean the list. Claims and objections is not the best, [but] we ended up with it. With claims and objections, you have to provide death certificates and a number of things which you wouldn’t get,” Norton explained.

“The PPP knew full well that if the claims and objections is used they will get a chance to maintain those phantom people. If, however it was house-to-house which they are very worried about the people would have had to present themselves and therefore you would have had a much cleaner list.

Now because of what happened with the courts we ended up with claims and objections which restricts the amount of people that will be removed. What the APNU/AFC would have to do in the light of that is to ensure that we have rigorous scrutinizing of the elections so that the rest of the phantom on the voters list don’t get a chance to vote.”