…GECOM chair urges secretariat staff
Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh has urged the Elections Secretariat to make every effort to meet the timelines as outlined in the electoral work plan for the much anticipated General and Regional Elections.
Justice Singh met with the staff of the Secretariat on Thursday afternoon, hours after she had informed President David Granger that the Elections Commission would be ready to conduct elections by the end of February 2020.
In her meeting, the GECOM Chair urged the electoral staff to work “honestly and diligently” to complete all tasks on time. Guyana Chronicle understands that on Monday the first batch of data, encoded into the National Register of Registrants Database from the just concluded House-to-House, will be sent to GECOM’s service providers in the United States of America (USA) to be cross-matched.
Justice Singh arrived at the February 2020 timeline for elections following extensive consultation with the Secretariat and the Commission. Justice Singh, upon being sworn-in as Chairman of GECOM on July 29, 2019, pledged to abide by the Constitution and the Laws of Guyana. “…There is only one way, in accordance with the law, and in accordance with the Constitution, and nothing else,” Justice Singh had told reporters.
She had entered office at a time when the House-to-House Registration Exercise, which had commenced in July, was being challenged, and once the High Court had ruled on the matter, she shortened the period for the national registration exercise, and ordered that the data be merged with the National Register of Registrants Database.
The High Court had ruled that though House-to-House Election was a legitimate exercise, it could not have resulted in the generation of a new National Register of Registrant Database as had been determined by GECOM which would have seen old registrants being removed from the database.
“Based on the ruling of the Chief Justice on 14th August 2019 that House to House Registration is not unlawful and is constitutional, the data garnered from that registration exercise must be merged with the existing National Register of Registrants Database (NRRDB),” GECOM had explained in a statement.
