IT has been reported that over 13,000 objections to names on the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) have been received by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) during the Claims and Objections (C&O) period concluded on November 11.

While this figure is yet to be confirmed, it was put forward by Opposition-nominated Commissioner, Sase Gunraj, on Tuesday, while Government-nominated Commissioner, Vincent Alexander said that he had heard the same and that the number might be higher.
“We didn’t get a figure on the number of objections,” Alexander said initially, adding later, “I have heard that [the number could be as high as 13,000 in particular areas, it may be greater than that generally.”

Coming out of the commission’s statutory meeting, he said that despite the number, the due process of ensuring a hearing in regards to the objections must be conducted. “The people will be invited, there’s a process, and it is a transparent process which allows to have a hearing for the objections and for the complainants, so to speak, to provide evidence. The onus is on the complainant to provide evidence,” he said.

This is also in accordance to the country’s laws which state that an elector may visit the appropriate registration office to register an objection to the PLE of a person whom the elector believes is not qualified to be an elector. The objection is documented, signed by the objector and then submitted to the registration officer. This is followed by an investigation of the objection and a hearing held by the Registration Officer.

Subsequently, a report is submitted to the secretariat and, if the objection is upheld, all particulars of the objectee are removed from the list to be used for polling. Just recently, the opposition has been contesting what it believes to be a large number of “unsubstantiated” objections being made by representatives of the government.

In a release on Friday, the party claimed that GECOM officials have received over 3,000 objections in Region Five which includes almost 500 names from the Amerindian settlement, Marakabai in the Mahaicony River. However, APNU AFC representative in Region Five (Mahaica/Berbice), Carol Joseph, saw her objections being considered and upheld having successfully provided evidence to show that there were 93 dead persons on the PLE.
“The opposition has been accusing us of making unsubstantiated objections; claiming that everybody we are objecting to is alive and well? Well we identified the names of 93 deceased persons on the list. We provided the evidence yesterday and their names are now off the list,” Joseph said. The some 13,000 now being floated is unconfirmed and the newspaper is unaware of whether there may have been duplicate objections in some cases or whether the objectors have evidence to suffice.

MORE INVESTIGATION ON LIST

Meanwhile, Gunraj said that there has been no update on whether persons would have come in to the commission’s various offices since the publishing of the list of names of those which have not collected their Identification (ID) Cards over a period of years.
On Saturday, the Elections Commission published in the daily newspapers the names of these individuals and are also expected to send registered mails urging the individuals to pick up their ID cards within 21 days or be removed from the Official List of Electors (OLE).

Should these individuals fail to collect their ID cards within the timeframe, they would still be permitted should they turn up with other appropriate identification, as they will be placed on a supplementary list. The number of uncollected ID cards, once noted as many as 20,000, was narrowed down to over 19,000 with the removal of those dead with the help of the General Registrar’s Office (GRO).

Commissioner Alexander said, on Tuesday, that it while this deduction was made by the GRO, it is highly likely that there are many more dead persons on the list which the GRO would not be able to account for. “That’s an ongoing process. It is not a one off. Every three months the GRO sends to GECOM the list of the registered dead and that list is grossly inadequate. As I’ve said repeatedly, there’s no circumstance under which that list would give you the registered dead overseas and they are going to be in the thousands between 2008 and now. So that’s the real issue,” Alexander said.

Meanwhile, with regards to the probability that some on the list may be imprisoned, the commissioner said that this is a question the commission may very well have to explore.

He stated: “…one wonders what that number looks like on one hand…I don’t think that we have the statistics on that but in any circumstance their place of residence would receive a correspondence in that regard. But I think it’s a good question and probably we can still have a relationship with the Prison Service based on the list that we have.”
From a list of over 18,000 names published by the commission, the majority of these come from Region Four at a total of 9,343 persons and Region Six at 3,267 persons. The area with the highest number of persons in question is Coldingen at 2,410, followed by Whim at 1,357.