– but to scrutinize in order to promote transparency in the electoral system

GENERAL Secretary of the ruling People’s Progressive Party, Clement Rohee yesterday said that his party was not given the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) to “kiss it in a closed room”, but rather to scrutinize so as to promote transparency in the electoral system of Guyana. 

Rohee made this statement yesterday at his Party’s weekly press conference held at Freedom House where he also made a call for GECOM to “think seriously about changing the laws” that govern the removal of dead people from the PLE since the mechanism currently in place is one which allows the possibility of having thousands of dead people still registered as those who can vote.

VOTING FOR THE DEAD
According to Rohee, the country has experienced historically, “people voting for the dead”, and permitting a list which comprises thousands of dead people still exposes the possibility of such a reoccurrence.
Rohee further emphasised the point that the legitimate concerns raised by his party were meant to promote the release of a list which mirrors transparency in the electoral system. He added that “I think it is wrong and in fact disrespectful if Mr. Surujbally is telling the PPP that we must accept a list that has hundreds, if not thousands of dead people,” adding that “we cannot accept that.”
“We have done our part, we have provided what we have found to GECOM and that was the reason we were given the list. We weren’t given the list to kiss it in a closed room. We were given the list to go out on the ground and check it again,” he declared, noting that this is what the PPP has done.
Commenting on the mechanism in place for removing dead people from the list, Rohee urged that GECOM will have to think seriously about changing the laws since it allows for dead people to still appear on the PLE. He noted that if persons fail to register a death of a family member through the General Register Office (GRO), no notice can be issued to GECOM for the removal of that person from the list. As a result, this allows for dead people to still appear on the list even though it is known that they are deceased.
“If for example there is incontrovertible evidence that this person is dead, buried, that there was weeping and wailing at the funeral loudly that you could hear houses away, yet the death was not registered, there is nothing that the GRO could send to the GECOM Commission to invite them to take that name off the list,” Rohee said, hinting at the appearance of former President Arthur Chung’s name on the list even though the entire country is aware that he is dead.
The PPP is therefore questioning whether the party “must accept” a list as the current one which contains thousands of dead people and allows for the possibility of “people voting for the dead.” The Party is also urging that the Chairman of GECOM and his team of experts “find a way out of this.”
Earlier in the week, Dr. Surujbally noted that “Removing the deceased from the National Register of Registrants is not something you do flippantly,” adding that from January 2008 to April 2014 a total of 12,404 names had been sent to GECOM and flagged as deceased; so they are not included in the PLE.
Dr. Surujbally added that GECOM is engaged in reviewing this process. “We have had talks with the GRO on several occasions,” he said.
According to him, once the review is completed, the Commission expects to forward a proposal to the various stakeholders for inputs and approval. He said that “Considerations when we review the policy can include establishing essential coordinates, which can be agreed upon by all – for example if only a lot number is missing from the data provided by the GRO, in the past, I’m sorry.
“…some of the Commissioners have said that at this stage when we have done so well we can possibly relax a bit, we can establish even margins of acceptable error, or we can proactively interact with the police, hospitals, and funeral parlours to ascertain a death.”
The Commission’s Chairman added that the current procedures employed to remove names of deceased persons from national electors’ lists are similar to what is done in most Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states.
He highlighted too that this issue was the subject of discussion at the last meeting of the Association of Caribbean Electoral Organisations (ACEO).
Dr. Surujbally said, “That topic was very much discussed and all participating EMBs (Election Management Bodies) recognised the problematic nature of the issue and agreed that you cannot willy-nilly remove people from the voters’ list.
“Nevertheless, even in situations where distrust is highly pronounced, it is possible to introduce criteria, which could remove names of people who are genuinely deceased, without actually having documentation from the GRO.”
According to him, he is also in talks with regional counterparts in addressing this issue. “When we have everything we can draft regulations to anchor those proposals,” he concluded.

(By Ravin Singh)