–MP Datadin says

ADDITIONAL requirements for voting that are outside of what is stipulated by Guyana’s Constitution cannot be instituted, Member of Parliament Sanjeev Datadin has said.

Datadin, during his weekly social media broadcast programme, “The Thursday Agenda,” addressed the pertinent issue of ongoing consultations on electoral laws.

Last Tuesday, the government continued its public consultations on the draft amendments to Guyana’s electoral laws, namely the Representation of the People Act (RoPA) and the National Registration (Amendment) (NRA).

Datadin related that notwithstanding the amendments to those pieces of legislation, whatever they outline cannot conflict with what is already established in Guyana’s supreme law, the Constitution.

It is the stipulations in the Constitution that also address a pertinent issue regarding the removal of persons from the voters’ list; this is a point that has been continuously brought up by the Opposition despite clarity on several occasions.

“By the Constitution of Guyana, you only need two things to be registered to vote, you need to be a Guyanese citizen and you need to have been registered on the voters list. There is no other requirement. There is no provision in the Constitution that says you have to live here, there is no residency requirement. Now it is important that you understand the Constitution,” Datadin related.

In 2019, the Chief Justice (ag), Roxane George ruled that the removal of the names of persons from the list of registrants, and who were not, or have not been, or are not registered in the current house-to-house registration exercise, would be unconstitutional.”

Hence, even if a house-to-house registration process is done by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), it is barred from removing the names of anyone from the National Register of Registrants, except in the case of death. Though Norton frequently complains about the need for a clean voters list, the coalition refused to participate in the recent Claims and Objections period to sanitise the list.