…GECOM Alexander says list used for LGE was not nationwide
…urges all parties to support house-to-house registration

By Lisa Hamilton

WITH Guyana’s known history in accusations of rigged elections and calls for the recounting of votes, it is unsettling that some would prefer that the country head into what has been described as ‘the mother of all elections’ without the most credible voter’s list.
This is the position of Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Commissioner, Vincent Alexander, who has served in the capacity since 2007 and has a clear understanding of the country’s struggle for “clean” elections.

He stands as one among many others in favour of a new round of house-to-house registration, which was last conducted in 2008 –- over 10 years ago.

However, following the Caribbean Court of Justice’s (CCJ’s) recent ruling that the motion of no-confidence against the government was successfully passed, the crucial exercise, conducted several times in the past, is now in limbo. On Monday, June 24, 2019, the CCJ will make a number of consequential orders intended to guide Guyana as it prepares for early elections.

These could also determine how soon Guyana heads into new elections and whether the national registration process is considered. “Elections cannot be run on trust. It has to be run on facts,” Alexander stated last Wednesday, during Mark Benschop’s radio programme – Straight Up.

At the time he was speaking on the topic of past illegitimate practices of the commission, which have caused many to question the results of previous elections. Both major political parties in Guyana have a history of requesting recounts of national votes taken at General and Regional Elections on the basis of distrust that the elections were conducted “free and fair.”

When the 2015 Elections showed victory for the coalition, then President Donald Ramotar was emphatic in stating that the process was “rigged” in favour of the then political opposition. He not only questioned the actions of the commission, but also that of polling day staff and called for a recount of the votes previously tallied. “We should have a total recount of votes; it won’t take a long time…to recount the whole election process to give this election credibility and integrity, we think that it is essential to have a total recount of the votes,” Ramotar had said.

Both parties have decades-long patterns of accusing each other of rigging elections, whether through the counting of votes, the tampering of ballot boxes; the use of falsified Identification Cards (ID) or illegal, substitute voting.

President David Granger has made it clear that his administration is sorely against these acts and will do all in its power to institute preventative measures to combat such destructive possibilities. Apart from ensuring GECOM received $5.54B in the 2019 Budget— for which $3.36B was allocated for house-to-house registration — another $3.4B was sought by the government in May, 2019 as a supplementary provision to facilitate the holding of elections. The move was in keeping with the President’s commitment that his administration will ensure that GECOM is ready to facilitate early elections in the event the CCJ –- as it did— rule that the ‘Vote of No-Confidence’ against his government was validly passed.

Added to this, the government also approved $75M for the upgrade of the Multiple Identity Document Issuing System which will produce better-quality ID cards. As far back as 2009, one can find media reports of numerous citizens complaining about the quality of their ID cards questioning their ability to be properly recognised.

The house-to-house registration exercise–budgeted for prior to the no-confidence motion—is another attempt of the David Granger-led administration to secure an election result which is untainted by the accusation of being “rigged.” Such is important, as reports indicate that there are approximately hundreds of thousands of improper entries on the April 30, 2019 expired Official Voter’s List.

Free and fair
“I want to outline a clear path. It is essential that we hold fair, free and credible elections. We cannot proceed on the current list of voters. It is outdated and corrupted. It may hold as many as 200,000 incorrect entries. What’s more, those who have reached the age of 18 years since the last election are not on it,” President Granger stated on Tuesday after acknowledging his acceptance of the CCJ’s decision.

Earlier in the year, while the no-confidence motion made its way through the courts and during the tug of war between GECOM Commissioners on whether house-to-house registration should be held, reporters were informed that, long before the motion, it was agreed that fresh registration ought to be held every seven years.

Alexander had told reporters back in January: “I am an advocate for house-to-house registration. I am not only an advocate, but one who is aware of the institutional decision taken years ago that we should have registration every seven years; and, that we haven’t, means that we do not have what is considered to be the ‘best list’.”

Former GECOM Chair, Dr. Steve Surujbally gave the Kaieteur News a similar account in January, 2019 when he stated: “After lots of deliberations, GECOM had decided a long time ago that the list would be sanitised or renewed every seven years. But this is an expensive process, it takes six months. The last one we did started in January 2008 and ended June of that year.”

GECOM approximates that the registration exercise could be wrapped up and the commission could be ready for elections by the end of November, 2019. At the moment, enumerators and assistant registration officers (AROs) country-wide are on standby for commencement which, to date, is expected this month.

Meanwhile, materials required for the exercise are being procured. On the other hand, Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo, since the CCJ ruling, has been pushing for new elections to be held within an already commenced three-month period, come hell or high water.
While Article 106 (7) of the Constitution stipulates that elections should be held within a three-month period following the successful passage of a no-confidence motion, it also provides for an extension of this period granted by no less than two-thirds of the votes of all elected members of the National Assembly.

However, Jagdeo’s position is: “We are reasonable, but we are not giving into anything that will run counter to the Constitution and the law… the people who are not on the list [those 18 years of age] is a total lie. It is beneath the President to so flagrantly lie to the people of our country.”

Yet, while rehashing his calls for an audit to be done on the General Registrar’s Offices (GRO) records back in March, Jagdeo had acknowledged that there have been major issues with the list. “We in the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) are paying careful attention to this, given what has happened historically — that the heavy padding of the voters list with fictitious names was a norm under previous governments sometime back in our history,” he is quoted according to the Guyana Times.

A ‘man-on-the-street’ interview conducted by this newspaper in March showed that many see the pending elections as “the mother of all elections” which will determine which political party guides Guyana on its first steps into ‘first oil’.

EXTENSION TO HOLD ELECTIONS
One citizen, Michael Small, told the newspaper: “The court should grant an extension [to the holding of elections]. If the opposition doesn’t want to support an extension in the Parliament, then the court should grant it, because the three months is every short. GECOM cannot mobilise its resources within three months for General Elections.”
Small’s observation is on track, as Alexander said on the radio programme that even if GECOM neglects house-to-house registration and proceeds on a Claims-and-Objections exercise, the three-month period would not suffice for the holding of elections.

NOT A NATIONWIDE LIST
Alexander also stated that those who are pushing for the list which was used at the 2018 Local Government Elections, are pushing for a flawed electoral process. “There those who are saying, now that you have a no-confidence drop everything and just have an election with the list that was used at Local Government [Elections]. The list that was used at Local Government was not a nationwide list. What we had was 70 elections in 70 Local Areas, so it isn’t one list and that list excluded areas that were not covered by Local Government…so to tell people that you had this perfect list for Local Government is not to say the truth,” he explained.

The country’s most recent Official List of Electors (OLE) or Voters’ List expired on April 30, 2019. While GECOM aims to always have a Voters’ List ready, its plans to conduct a Claims-and-Objections exercise in January 2019 to facilitate such, ahead of the April expiration date, were curtailed when the GECOM Chair Justice (ret’d) James Patterson fell ill.
With months lost and house-to-house registration already scheduled for the same year, the commission continued with its plan to create a new List, which would be the cleanest list, as the exercise goes door-to-door to gather information.

CONTINUOUS REGISTRATION
Meanwhile, Jagdeo believes that there have been several cycles of continuous registration since the 2015 general elections, which can see all persons aged 14 and over on the National Register of Registrants (NRR) up to October 31, 2018, being included on the OLE.
Nonetheless, this option would still exclude individuals who were not registered or included on this NRR at age 14.

Speaking to another suggestion by the opposition, Alexander agreed that the National Registration Act provides for the chief elections officer (CEO) to exclude persons from the list who have been absent from the country for three months, following advice from the chief immigration officer.

However, the commissioner said that this has never been followed through. He posited that house-to-house registration is therefore necessary as, without it, the strong possibility remains for “fraudulent elections.”

He added that it is incomprehensible as to why a process which would result in fair, credible and unquestionable results would be so vehemently rejected by the opposition. “House-to-house registration has never been rejected to[sic]. We had it in the 1991-1992 period and they had it subsequently. It’s a part of the standard operation procedures of GECOM. But we now have a ridiculous situation where the people who conducted house-to-house registration; the people who voted for house-to-house registration [to be held in 2019] are now the ones who have gone to court to say this is unconstitutional,” Alexander said, adding: “It is the only mechanism we have for truly producing a clean list.”

Recently appointed U.S. Ambassador to Guyana, Sarah-Ann Lynch, also called for the country to embark on “genuinely free and fair elections.” However, further controversy looms as the CCJ, on June 18, 2019, also ruled that the process of appointing Justice (Ret’d) James Patterson, Chairman of GECOM, was flawed.

GECOM CAN’T OPERATE WITHOUT A CHAIRMAN
Should the CCJ order that the GECOM Chair be immediately removed, this could pose more complications. Questioned whether GECOM can operate without a chairman, Alexander responded: “We cannot. In GECOM, a quorum includes a chairman…the administration can continue to work, but the commissioners will not be able to meet. Things to be decided that requires the commission will be unable to come into being.”