A TOTAL of 395 objections have been upheld by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) out of over 17,900 made across the country during the concluded Claims and Objections (C&O) period.

GECOM PRO Yolanda Ward has stated that out of the total objections made, 13,747 were withdrawn; 3,822 were dismissed and there were 609 appeals. It was revealed at a recent meeting of the Commission that thousands of objections to names on the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) had been received by the Commission.

According to Law, an elector may visit the appropriate registration office to register an objection to the PLE of a person whom the elector believes was 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. Many of the objections to names on the List have been attributed to representatives of the coalition.
However, party representative in Region 5 (Mahaica/Berbice) area, Carol Joseph has stated that numerous objections were thrown out by the Commission in the absence of any representation by the APNU+AFC accredited scrutineer.

“I was not informed. I was totally unaware of the decision of the RO to proceed with the public enquiries. He had the responsibility to inform me about the imminence of these proceedings at least three days before. He did not. He did not adhere to what is considered to be the proper procedure. He went ahead and held the enquiries and made decisions about the APNU/AFC objections, completely and totally in my absence as the accredited scrutineer,” she said.

The Returning Officer of GECOM’s office at Mahaicony is reported to have rejected APNU/AFC objections to over 535 names being on the PLE in the Abary/Mahaica Sub Region of Region 5. Joseph has stated that she has formally appealed the dismissals of the APNU AFC objections by the GECOM Returning Officer at Mahaicony. The appeal is to be considered by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GECOM. Altogether, Joseph said that the APNU/AFC had objected to a total of 13,000- odd names being on the PLE in Region 5.