THE draft Representation of the People Act which has been out in the public domain has received feedback and following consultations is expected to be tabled in Parliament.

This was disclosed by Vice-President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo on Friday last at a press conference at the Office of the President, where he stated that while the government had intended to have the draft out for feedback for six weeks it has been out for some three months.

It was then that he noted that a number of comments were received from several persons as he mentioned that the most substantive comments came from two sources, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) and a group called the Electoral Reform Group.

“I’ve asked Minister Teixeira and Nandlall to meet with both groups and a team to meet with both groups formally on the legislation,” he told reporters.

The government, he said, has gone through all the other comments received and as a result the final draft will be ready once the consultations have been completed and will be tabled in Parliament.

He also indicated that while the opposition, APNU+AFC has called for electoral reform – he had expected the opposition to participate by sending in comments. While he added that they chose not to, the Vice-President said that he hopes that they will participate in Parliament.

Meanwhile, he added that the government wants the law to be very explicit in stating that the Chief Elections Officer must secure from the General Registration Office a list of all dead persons to then remove those persons from the voters list.

“GECOM has the right now to remove people from the list based on maybe a death certificate, so we want to make the process transparent so GECOM should do that on a large scale,” the Vice-President said.

He added that it must be stated in law that they must share the list of dead persons gathered for every year to the political parties and publicise the list in the newspapers.

“We want to put that into the law, so every time they remove dead people, they must share this with all the parties in Guyana and publish it in the newspapers, not just do it in GECOM on their own,” Dr Jagdeo said.