No tampering at GECOM
GECOM Chair Justice (Ret'd), Claudette Singh
GECOM Chair Justice (Ret'd), Claudette Singh

– says chair

GECOM Chair, Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh, has blasted an article from online news outlet, Inews, titled “tampering of NRR at GECOM” as sensational, noting that such media reports are poor.

The article noted that the PPP received information that there is currently ongoing at GECOM’s Secretariat, an exercise whereby “adjustments” are being made to data on the National Register of Registrants (NRR) using unverified information generated from the truncated house-to-house registration exercise.

The article stated that this exercise is being conducted by Melanie Marshall, the controversial Returning Officer of Region Four, who deliberately made herself unavailable to receive the PPP’s request for a recount of votes in Region Four at the 2015 National and Regional Elections.

“This tampering with the NRR by GECOM’s staff is not only unlawful, but it is clearly intended to cause chaos and confusion on elections day by facilitating duplicate voting, permitting unqualified persons to vote and preventing qualified persons from voting. So for example, if a person’s name or address is changed on the NRR, it is that change that will appear in the Official List of Electors (OLE), which in turn will require the voter to vote at a different location from where he/she is residing, or being prevented from voting altogether. This may result in violence, mayhem and public disorder on elections day,” the Inew article stated.

At GECOM’s Headquarters in Kingston, Georgetown, on Monday, the chair noted that during the elections season, it appears as if some media outlets embrace sensational reportage.
“No one is tampering with the National Register of Registrants (NRR) at GECOM… what is being done is in the house-to-house process we discovered that there were three categories of persons, persons who were already registered, all those persons that were previously registered, these are not new registrants. These persons’ name would appear on the preliminary list, because the preliminary list was extracted from the National Register of Registrants Data Base (NRRDB),” the GECOM chair said.

She explained that persons on the Revised List of Electors (RLE) are the persons whose names appear on the preliminary list.

“Now from the house-to-house registration, you will find that there were persons who were previously registered. Those persons made no changes or anything, they went back to their old addresses, they remain on the preliminary list, but there were others although they were on the preliminary list they made some changes,” Justice (Ret’d) Singh said.

She continued: “For example, they had some new addresses and some persons might have been married and changed their names – that is currently being addressed. There were persons whose names appeared on the RLE, for example persons like me, who changed my address since the last house-to-house [registration]. My name would have appeared on the RLE at the old address, well GECOM always uses the latest registration transaction so that is being done to update the process, so there is no tampering, no one is tampering”

SHARE THIS ARTICLE :
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All our printed editions are available online
emblem3
Subscribe to the Guyana Chronicle.
Sign up to receive news and updates.
We respect your privacy.