THERE has been a proposal by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Secretariat for new transactions from the house-to-house registration to be added to the Revised List of Electors (RLE).

Of the 370,000 transactions from the exercise, a first batch of 179,000 has been received from which there are 29,082 new transactions. Chair of the Commission, Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh told the media on Tuesday that while the commission has not yet received the second batch of cross-matched names from the exercise, it hopes to receive the same by the coming Tuesday.

Speaking to the proposal made, Commissioner Vincent Alexander said, “One of the matters discussed today was using the house-to-house data for the purpose of the preparation of the Revised List in which circumstance, the data would be used so that someone who was involved in house-to-house, who is not a new registrant, would only be affected if the person provided new information in the house-to-house.”

He explained that the only reason a person’s information from the house-to-house exercise would be affected is if he or she had made a change in addresses or claim. The names of these individuals have been up at GECOM’s various offices for public scrutiny.
However, as expressed in the past, Commissioner Sase Gunraj is displeased with the proposal to incorporate the house-to-house data.

Gunraj does not believe that the information has been subject to “public scrutiny” as no order was given when the data was placed at the various GECOM offices to inform the public. He is also displeased that no objections were entertained by the commission on the house-to-house data during the Claims and Objections (C&O) period. On the other hand, Singh has maintained that the commission is within its right to utilise the data during the C&O period.

She referenced the August 2019 decisions of Chief Justice (ag) Roxane George-Wiltshire in a case challenging the constitutionality of registration exercise in which she ruled that the Constitution and the Laws of Guyana provide for the conduct of house-to-house registration as a form of verification.
“Going back to the Chief Justice’s decision where she spoke about verification of the list…[it was said that] we can verify the list even in conjunction with the house-to-house or separately,” the Chair said.

This house-to-house data, being lawful, the Chair stated that she decided that every entry from the data, following cross-matching, would be posted for public scrutiny. Had the house-to-house exercise gone uninterrupted, the Chair stated that there would have been no need for the verification process. However, she noted that she cut short the exercise because of the ruling that GECOM had no legal authority to retire names from the National Register of Registrants Database (NRRDB).