HEAD of the Presidential Secretariat and Cabinet Secretary, Dr. Roger Luncheon, yesterday announced that the claims component for the extended Guyana Elections Commission’s claims and objections period ends today. Speaking at his weekly post-Cabinet press briefing at the Office of the President, the HPS said that Cabinet continues to review GECOM’s preparation for the upcoming 2011 General and Regional Elections.
He said, “Cabinet was advised that August 4, 2011, would be the official end of the claims component of the exercise.”
According to Dr. Luncheon, it was anticipated that over 5000 more Guyanese would have been registered by GECOM during the extended period, a development which is welcomed by Cabinet.
Last month GECOM announced that it was re-opening the claims and objections period for 13 days, to facilitate Guyanese who were unregistered due to a lack of source documents.
This announcement was made by chairman of GECOM, Dr. Steve Surujbally, at a media conference on July 18, where he noted that the government has committed to making funds available to conduct the extended exercise.
A majority of the GECOM’s commissioners voted in favour of the re-opening of the claims and objections period for 13 days, beginning on July 25, ten of which would be set aside for the claims aspect.
The decision to do this stemmed from a recent request by the ruling party and an initial request by the opposition political parties, since a large number of Guyanese were likely to be disenfranchised.
As to the intensified efforts by the General Register Office (GRO) to ensure that birth certificates were issued for this process, the HPS pointed out that the GRO, up until July 9, did all that they could, but failed to produce source documents  to large numbers of Guyanese.  
“They had to perform,” he stated
Dr. Luncheon emphasized that despite the aggressive efforts to ensure more Guyanese are not disenfranchised, he remains confident in the features built into GECOMs protocols, such as scrutineers and fingerprinting, to safeguard against “double registration.”