OPPOSITION Leader, Aubrey Norton, on Tuesday, called for the resignation of GECOM Chairman, Justice (r’td), Claudette Singh, saying her failure to heed his call will see the Coalition taking appropriate actions.

Speaking at his weekly press conference on Tuesday, the Opposition Leader contended that the Coalition would not go into an election with Justice Singh as Chairman of GECOM and what he claims to be a bloated list of electors.

“And there are many things we can do to put the pressure on the elections commission and Claudette Singh. But we had first given her the opportunity to tender her resignation as a decent judge who would have served and to recognise that you cannot claim to be independent and, on every issue, you are voting with the People’s Progressive Party and you seem to have no interest in finding consensus on these issues. And so, we have left the door open. We hope we don’t have to close it and Claudette Singh will do the decent thing and resign,” he said.

The High Court, in August of 2019, had ruled that persons cannot be removed from the National Database of Registrants through house-to-house registration but through claims and objections and the provision of names of deceased persons by the General Registrar’s Office to GECOM.

The APNU+AFC Coalition after a five-month attempt to rig the 2020 regional and general elections, was forced to vacate power due to mounting pressure from the international community and civil society to respect the will of the people.

The 2020 general and regional elections were certified by the international community as free and fair.
The Coalition’s criticism of the list of electors is not new. It had repeatedly attacked the list after the successful passage of the December 2018 no-confidence vote in a bid to delay the elections as long as possible and had employed a similar strategy to derail the recount of votes of the 2020 elections that was supervised by CARICOM.

During the recount process, the Coalition made a number of claims, including votes from dead persons and persons who migrated. However, the CARICOM team, which the Coalition had described as the ‘most competent’ interlocutor, had roundly dismissed these claims as a “fishing expedition” and time-wasting exercise.