PLEASE permit me to correct two gravely inaccurate statements purportedly made by Dr. Steve Surujbally, Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) – as published in three of the Daily Newspapers of Friday, June 3, 2011 – during his feature address at the 19th Annual General Meeting of the Private Sector Commission at the  Pegasus Hotel on Thursday, June 2, 2011. The Newspapers reported that Dr. Surujbally said:-

i. To date 38,000 persons are without source documents for registration, and

ii. Scrutineers are unnecessary.

Before I go further, it is essential that I note that I procured a copy of and examined the entire footage of Dr. Surujbally’s presentation to determine for myself whether he in fact erred and actually made these pronouncements.  HE DID NOT.

In fact, with respect to “i.” above, Dr. Surujbally reported that during the 2008 House-to-House Registration exercise, we came to the realisation that approximately 38,000 persons could not apply for registration because they were not in possession of the basic source documents.  He did not say, nor did he imply that this is the existing situation.

To give some more clarity to this matter, it is necessary that I emphasise the following:

We also found out during the 2008 House-to-House Registration exercise that the births of many of the approximately 38,000 persons had never been registered; hence, they cannot be issued birth certificates and that this problem existed in the hinterland as well as in the coastland communities.

Recognising the serious nature of this problem since the 2008 House-to-House Registration exercise, we did the following:

* We documented the particulars of the (approximately) 38,000 persons and shared this with the Registrar General and the political parties in Parliament requesting that all possible action be taken towards ensuring that the entire situation be regularised, so that the concerned persons could apply for registration. 
* We assisted in the distribution of birth certificate application forms in the hinterland communities for persons to apply for the document.  In many instances our staff paid the fees associated with application for birth certificates from their own pockets.
* We sought and participated at meetings involving key stakeholders including the Registrar General, to place emphasis on the need for the situation to be addressed.  The Registrar General had been adamant that her Office was treating efficiently with applications for registration, that there was no backlog in the processing of applications for birth certificates, and that birth certificates cannot be issued to persons whose births were not registered, nor can birth certificates be issued to persons who have not applied.
* We had emphasised since before the implementation of Continuous Registration in 2005, prior to and during every subsequent registration exercise that all persons who were eligible for registration then and now, but who were/are not in possession of the relevant supporting document(s), must take immediate steps to acquire the said documents in order for them to apply for registration.  We have almost been pleading for those persons to get their source documents for almost six years now.

I must report that the evidence before us now is that our efforts have borne a significant amount of fruit as the following figures would show.

I have reported that from the 2008 House-to-House Registration exercise that we had documented that approximately 38,000  persons could not apply for registration because they were not in possession of source documents.  This number included persons who would have been 14 years old or over at the time.
* During the Claims and Objections Exercise for Local Government Elections, 2010, we registered 18,047 persons who would have been 18 years old or over.
* During the second Cycle of Continuous Registration, 2010, we registered 45,554 persons including persons in the 14-18 years group.
* During the ongoing Claims and Objections exercise, we have already registered over 10,000 persons who would be 18 years old or over by September 30, 2011. 

An analysis of these figures would substantiate our position that we may have well surpassed the 38,000 persons who could not apply for registration because they were not in possession of source documents.  Mind you, this must not be interpreted as a GECOM position that there are not persons out there without source documents.  We are very much aware of the category of persons without birth certificates because their births were never registered.  However, no one can disagree that there is not much that GECOM can do to alleviate this problem.  In fact, we were told unambiguously that this is not our mandate.

With respect to “ii.” above, Dr. Surujbally, in explaining the high cost of elections in Guyana which has been decried by some stakeholders, mentioned that GECOM did not ask for scrutineers.  Dr. Surujbally also mentioned the conduct of fingerprints cross-matching as an exercise which costs a significant amount of money, thereby sending up the overall cost of elections. His intention in both cases was to accentuate that the hundreds of millions of dollars that are spent on paying for such services is not something that GECOM demands. 

Section 8 of the Election Laws (amendment) Act No. 15 of 2000 provides the conditions under which scrutineers are appointed. It is essential that it be pointed out that Dr. Surujbally is unmistakably aware of this piece of legislation and that the presence of scrutineers is a key element in the transparency and credibility of the registration and electoral processes.  He is also aware that a direct result of this feature is the political parties’ confidence in the outcomes of these processes.  Why then would he denounce the scrutineering feature of the registration and election processes as “unnecessary”?  Clearly, the GECOM Chairman’s comment was taken and reported out of context.

On a related matter, it is important that I note that Dr. Surujbally did not report that “apart from local observers, the Organisation of American States (OAS) will also be an observer that will function within the parameters of a code of conduct”, as was published.  In fact Dr. Surujbally said that current discussions tend to suggest that the Commonwealth Secretariat, CARICOM, and the Organisation of American States (OAS) will be invited to send observer teams to monitor the elections, and that there are provisions for the accreditation of local observers who would have to operate within the parameters of  relevant Rules of Procedures guiding the monitoring of elections.  

I hope these comments lend clarity to the published incorrectness.