THE General and Regional Elections are just 27 days away and political parties have already mobilised and rallied their supporters in almost every part of the country, but, as time winds down, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is hoping that the outcome will be peaceful.

A peaceful election is in the interest of everyone, said Chairperson of CARICOM and Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, during a press briefing at the CARICOM Secretariat, on Monday evening. Prime Minister Mottley, who met with President David Granger and Leader of the Opposition, Bharrat Jagdeo during a visit to Guyana on Monday, said: “I think both sides are comfortable…there are concerns, but they are going to work them out, we hope.”
“We will keep a watchful eye and we have every confidence in the Guyanese people that they will resolve their determinations and decisions in a way that will benefit the people of the country.” As part of keeping a “watchful eye,” CARICOM will have a team of election observers “on the ground,” just as any other institution.

Members of the diplomatic community, who have also been observing electoral process so far, had also urged political leaders to campaign in the spirit of “hearty” and “respectful” competition, with the ultimate goal of ensuring free and fair elections.

President Granger had said he is confident that “credible” and “efficient” elections will be conducted as scheduled on March 2, 2020. “The government side is satisfied that Guyana is on-stream to have efficient and credible elections on the second of March, 2020. “We are satisfied with the work that is taking place now and we feel that the Chairman of the Commission has got her finger on the pulse and will do everything in her ability to ensure that we will have credible elections,” said the President.

THE Guyana Elections Commission GECOM had recently certified and released an Official List of Electors (OLE) of 661,028 persons, for eligible voting in the March 2, General and Regional Elections. Guyana Chronicle reported that the decision to finalise the OLE came following some 88,000 necessary address changes to the Revised List of Electors (RLE).
GECOM Commissioner Vincent Alexander was, however, convinced that the large number of persons on the list is evidence that it is bloated. “Clearly we are going forward with a bloated list because there’s no circumstance under which a population of 750,000 plus with a school population of approximately 200,000 can produce a voters list of 661, 000,” Commissioner Vincent Alexander said. A breakdown provided showed that the National Register of Registrant (NRR) initially started off with 663,365 and 646, 625 were extracted for the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE). Of this number, the General Registrar’s Office (GRO) removed 6,094 deceased persons; there were 68 successful objections; 16, 642 new registrants from the house-to-house registration exercise and 4,258 from the claims and objections (C&O) exercise.

There were other omissions but the RLE eventually came down to 661, 378 after which over 300 duplicates were identified and removed. The commission was previously catering to some 91,000 changes of address coming from persons who participated in the house-to-house registration exercise.