THE Revised List of Electors (RLE) is “dirty”, according to Brigadier (rtd) David Granger, the presidential candidate of the Alliance of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC).“That is a dirty list,” he said, speaking at a fund-raising event in South Ozone Park, Queens, New York, on Sunday.

Granger added that, “The list has suddenly gone up by a hundred thousand to 567,000. Keep your eyes open. We do not believe in that. How in three years in a country in which the population is falling the voters list has gone up by a hundred thousand?”
Numbers from the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) indicated that the RLE includes the names of 570,786 eligible voters. The number of eligible voters in the November 2011 General and Regional Elections was 492,193.
DANGEROUS CONNOTATIONS
GECOM’s Chairman, Dr. Steve Surujbally, expressed concern over the types of words used to describe the list.
“They should not be using words like padded or bloated, because the connotation is that we are not purposely increasing the list. We are working on reducing the number of people on the list, but taking people off the list is not easy,” he said.
Dr. Surujbally acknowledged that the names of persons who have migrated from Guyana, as well as persons who have died, are still included on the list.
“We would be first to say the list has people dead or people not in Guyana and this is something that Mr. Granger is aware of,” he said.
However, the GECOM Chairman pointed out that there is a legal procedure to removing the names of dead persons on the list and stressed that GECOM cannot unilaterally undertake this task.
On the issue of persons who have left Guyana, Dr. Surujbally explained that if their names are on the list then it means these persons registered, their residency was verified and the relevant procedures were followed to have them placed on the voters’ list.
“We do not know how many people registered and, having their residency, subsequently left the country. You cannot take them off the list. Suppose you take the name off and the individual comes home and the situation that arises is that they are not eligible to vote. What happens then?” he questioned.
According to him, these explanations have been made to Mr. Granger, as well as other stakeholders in the electoral process.
“They all know the reasons for the increased number of the list….this is not something unique to Guyana. This is a global phenomenon,” he said.
The GECOM Chairman was emphatic in making clear that all the challenges considered, all stakeholders are well aware of the measures in place to ensure that no person votes twice or votes in the place of another person.
“The important thing with these numbers is that there cannot be one person voting twice,” he posted.
He declined to comment on Mr. Granger’s reason for raising this concern abroad, as opposed to voicing them locally, and more importantly communicating these concerns to GECOM.
TROUBLING FOUNDATION LAID
Meanwhile, politicos commenting on the matter have questioned Granger’s reasoning for questioning the validity of the RLE abroad, as well as the troubling undertones of his words of choice in describing the list.
The observation is that this could be the laying of a ‘troubling foundation’ on which a loss at the upcoming May 11 polls for the APNU+AFC Alliance could be defined against.
Guyana’s political history and the history of the People’s National Congress (PNC), which is the majority partner of APNU, as well as the fact that several APNU leaders are the same activists of the widely detailed ‘troubling’ PNC days were named as other factors of concern.
Officials of the current Administration in the last month have addressed the need for Guyana to continue along the path of peaceful electoral processes, given the consequences of the violence that marred elections as recently as 1997.
Recent comments on the matter have come from Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, in an interview televised on the National Communications Network (NCN).
He recalled that in 1992, when the PPP managed after a long 28 years of struggle, to bring ‘free and fair’ elections to the country, that “it was the first time that we got this and those elections were certified to be ‘free and fair.’
However, Mr. Desmond Hoyte, at first never wanted to accept the results. He, however, eventually had to but many executives of his party dissented, and the Attorney General recalled the results.
“There was mayhem in the streets of our country, violence… innocent people were killed,” he said.
Nandlall also examined the 1997 elections, and he remembered that “again those elections were observed by foreign observers and they were certified and again the results were not accepted and you had chaos, beating… and as a result the PPP/C Administration was forced to give up two years of government, because we entered into the Herdmanston Accord.”
Even so, he stated that “in 2001, those elections (yet) again were observed and were certified to be free and fair, and still when the results were out, violence again…that is the record of the PNC.”
All considered, Nandlall pointed out that several electoral observers have been invited for the May 11 General and Regional Elections.
The traditional observer missions include the Organization of American States (OAS), the Commonwealth, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). Additionally, the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) has approached the Commission for accreditation as a local election observer. The Electoral Assistance Bureau (EAB) is also expected to revamp its operations and act as another local observer. The Governments of India and South Africa have also been invited.