–by latching on to ‘discredited bloated list’ argument, AG says

WITH claims of the voters list being “bloated” already discredited, given that overseas-based Guyanese are legally on it, the Alliance For Change (AFC) could only be using this as an excuse to not contest the Local Government Elections (LGEs) in order to “save face”, Attorney-General Anil Nandlall, S.C., has said.

The AFC, in a statement on Sunday, said that its National Executive Committee (NEC) has arrived at a consensus that the party will not contest the upcoming LGEs without changes to the list of electors.

“The Alliance For Change (AFC) has indicated that it will not contest the Local Government Elections. To save face, they have opportunistically latched on to the discredited bloated list argument peddled by their larger coalition partner,” Minister Nandlall said, adding:

“In the press statement, they rehashed the selfsame, frivolous and vexatious contentions advanced by APNU in respect of the voters list. They also resorted to the repetition of their irrational and ridiculous allegations of electoral irregularities in respect of the 2020 Regional and General Elections.”

The AFC, which is a member of the coalition with the A Partnership For National Unity (APNU), had said that they have concerns of going to an elections with the current voters list, claiming that it was bloated by some 200,000 persons.

However, Leader of the Opposition Aubrey Norton, at a press conference last week, revealed that the opposition was basing this premise on the amount of Guyanese that are based overseas.

Claiming to cite US Homeland Security Statistics, Norton said that there are approximately 200,000 Guyanese migrants with permanent visas living in the US, and another 50,000 that are in the US on temporary visitors’ visas.

However, non-residency is not a basis for the removal of a Guyanese from the voters’ list. Nandlall underscored that the list cannot be bloated if the people that are on it are there legally.

As it is now, once a Guyanese is registered to vote at an election in Guyana, there is no requirement that he/she must be resident in Guyana or out of Guyana.

This law was reinforced in the 2019 ruling of Chief Justice (ag) Roxanne George, in which she established that the failure of registered persons to be present or resident during a “house-to-house” exercise by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) would not be a criterion to remove a person from the National Register of Registrants (NRR) or Official List of Electors (OLE), since to remove that person on the basis of residency would be unconstitutional.

A person’s name can only be deleted if he/she no longer meets the qualifying criteria on the Article 159 (2) of the Constitution. In order for this constitutional establishment to be changed, it would require the acquiescence of at least two-thirds majority of the 65-member National Assembly.

Vice-President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, in addressing the matter of house-to-house registration and the removal of names from the list, had affirmed that the government is not going to make decisions that would disenfranchise people; that rather, they would implement systems that would enfranchise all eligible voters.

Although the AFC continues to perpetuate their claims, the decision by the party’s Executive Committee to not contest the elections came as no surprise, as its membership has been on the decline due to the migration of some former leaders including Raphael Trotman, and former Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo being relegated to the fringes of Guyana’s political landscape.

It is well documented, too, that the list of electors scheduled to be used in 2023 is the same one used in 2015 that saw the APNU+ AFC win the government. It is also the same list of electors that used in the 2016 and 2018 LGEs, in which they were forced by the People’s National Congress (PNC) to contest those elections alone.
On both occasions, the AFC suffered immense defeat, particularly in 2018 when the party could attract only four per cent of the votes.

Additionally, the losses have been compounded further, as the AFC has been reduced to begging the PNC to honour agreements at the local government level to have its candidates in top positions.

The latest such example is in Linden, where the PNC has rejected the AFC’s candidate to fill the post of Vice-Chairman of Region 10.