THE Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has been urged by the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) to ensure that the Official List of Electors (OLE) for the impending general and regional elections must be “properly sanitised and clean” of any discrepancies.PPP’s General Secretary Clement Rohee told reporters earlier this week that “the PPP’s objective has always been to have a list that will not disenfranchise any eligible Guyanese, paving the way for another free and fair election in Guyana.”
He urged that “the list must be correct, clean and consistent.”
According to him, this will minimise confusion on Election day, as well as address speculations resulting from the time taken to announce the elections result.
Additionally, in response to Rohee’s comments, GECOM’s Deputy Chief Elections Officer (DCEO), Vishnu Persaud, told Chronicle that the upcoming Claims and Objections period will improve the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the OLE.
“As a matter of norm it is the standard operating procedures that GECOM spares no effort in ensuring the accuracy of any OLE it produces. Added to that, the Claims and Objections period is provided to improve the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the OLE,” he said.
The upcoming Claims and Objections period follows the end of the Seventh Cycle of Continuous Registration, the last one before the impending general and regional elections.
The numbers released to the Chronicle indicated that new registrations, currently being verified, number 6,003 persons, while there were also 1,163 changes and corrections to existing registration information and 1,248 transfers due to issues related to change of address, etc.
Also, at the end of the sixth cycle of continuous registration, in the latter part of June, there were registrations of some 14,981 new persons. There were also 2,004 transfers, owing to issues related to changes of address, and 2,747 changes/corrections to existing registration information.
Prior to the Sixth Cycle of Continuous Registration, the last such exercise ended in December 2013.