–GECOM commissioners say as PPP threaten lawsuit over house-to- house registration

OPPOSITION-NOMINATED Commissioner Robeson Benn has threatened legal action against the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) if it does not cease preparations for house-to-house registration within the next seven days.

A media release on Tuesday revealed that Opposition Member of Parliament Anil Nandlall, through his firm A. Nandlall & Associates and on behalf of Benn, wrote Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield on April 2, 2019, threatening legal action if preparation for house-to-house registration is not put on hold.

The letter was copied to the GECOM Chairman Justice (Ret’d) James Patterson. It gave an ultimatum for a halt in preparations for house-to-house registration on the basis that the exercise would be a “violation of the constitution” by excluding persons who will be absent from Guyana during the period of its conduct.

“GECOM is now proceeding on a house-to-house registration to create a new List of National Registrants from which the Preliminary Voters’ List will be extracted and this is being done with the stated intention of excluding persons, who will be absent from Guyana during the exercise. Consequently, those persons who are currently duly registered and are on the List and, therefore, now qualified to vote but absent from Guyana, are now going to be intentionally excluded from the List in this proposed process, as this is one of the stated purpose of this exercise,” Nandlall wrote.

Currently, over 1,300 persons are being trained at 16 locations in Georgetown to become Assistant Registration Officers (ARO) and enumerators for the conduct of house-to-house registration, which is likely to commence in late May or early June.

Opposition-nominated members of the Commission have been vehemently against the conduct of this registration and have continued in like manner even after the Court of Appeal ruled that the no-confidence motion was not validly passed in the National Assembly, thereby overturning the High Court’s decision.

In the correspondence Nandlall stated that the position is based on Article 159 which gives every Guyanese national the right to vote adding that the current electors list can be cleansed by engagement between the CEO and the Office of the Registrar General.

As such, he concluded: “I respectfully demand that you refrain from embarking on or, proceeding with, this unlawful and unconstitutional exercise, which will disenfranchise thousands of persons now qualified to vote. If I do not hear from you within seven days of the date hereof, I will assume that you have rejected my demand and I will have no alternative but to advise my client to institute legal proceedings against you, to restrain you from embarking on, or proceeding with, the aforesaid house-to-house registration.”
Coming out of GECOM’s statutory meeting on Tuesday, Commission Vincent Alexander told the newspaper that Nandlall’s letter was not discussed prior to the Opposition-Commissioners staging their now habitual walk out.

He explained, nonetheless, that Lowenfield will have to utilise his judgement in consultation with the chairman to determine the way forward.

In the meanwhile, Alexander presented his opinion on the matter while using provisions within the Constitution and the National Registration Act as guidelines. “The Constitution of Guyana and the registration facilities facilitate any Guyanese who is at home at the time of registration to register or any Guyanese who is at home at the time of Claims and Objections to make a claim to get on to the register. So, there’s no mechanism that is intended to exclude a Guyanese who wants to exercise his franchise,” the Commissioner began.

He added that house-to-house registration is nothing new to Guyana and has been lobbied for in the past by all members of the Commission.

In previous interviews, Government-nominated Commissioners had indicated that, prior to the no-confidence motion, there was a consensus on the Commission regarding the plan to conduct house-to-house registration in 2019.

The agreement led the Commission to request and receive, within the 2019 budget, some $3B for the registration. “Registration is nothing new. It is something we have done repeatedly in this country. Under the PPP government we’ve done this; the PPP Commissioners have agreed in the past that we do registration periodically so it’s not any one set of people who are imposing registration on this country,” he reminded.

Added to this, the Commissioner said that the Constitution speaks to GECOM’s three mandates which are the demarcation of boundaries, registration and the conduction of elections.

The National Registration Act, Section 40 was also cited as giving clear instructions for persons who leave the country and return to be included in the voting process. Alexander stated: “That Act provides for persons who have left the country and haven’t returned in three months for the Chief Immigration Officer to send GECOM a copy of the list and GECOM’s Chief Elections Officer and the Registration Officer can exercise his mind as to who he will take off of the list based on some criteria. However, those persons can make an objection if they’re taken off and those persons can also, through Claims and Objections, get back on to the list.”

With another legal matter coming against the Commission following the recently dismissed “conspiracy” charge filed against the three Government-nominated Commissioners, Alexander said that he notices a pattern.

“This is only making it clear to us that there is some ulterior motive why the PPP does not want registration. There’s something in the midst that’s going for them and my argument is that that which is going for them is the opportunity of substitute voting and staged voting,” he said, referencing to such cases as in 2011 in the Eccles, East Bank Demerara community.

He asserted: “There’s a pattern. It’s an attempt to put us under pressure; it’s an attempt to intimidate us and we will not be intimidated.”

Walkout
Meanwhile, the walkout of the Opposition-nominated Commissioners on Tuesday was done on the basis of disagreement on whether the statutory meeting was a new one or a continuation of the previous meeting.

Alexander explained that this occurred despite the agreeance of all Commissioners at the previous meeting on difference in meaning between the terms ‘suspended’ or ‘adjourned’ and ‘concluded’.

“When the Chairman ruled that we would continue from where we left off the last time, then he [Benn] left. So what we have is a situation which I call ‘Benn either gets what he wants or nothing’,” Alexander said.

For weeks now the Opposition-nominated Commissioners have been staging consecutive walkouts stymieing the work of the Commission.

On the Government’s end, on March 27, 2019, President Granger committed that the Government will use its majority in the National Assembly to make available the $3.5B requested by GECOM to hold new General and Regional Elections.

“We are going to ensure that whatever happens, at any level of the judicial system, Guyana is going to be prepared,” he said.

In response, apart from preparations for house-to-house registration, Alexander said that GECOM continues to conduct preparation activities not dependent on the funding such as rectifying its manuals while some election-related commodities can be acquired and stored until needed.