– plans second round of house-to-house training for weekend

THE Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) says it is not bothered by any threats from the opposition for it to halt preparations for house-to-house registration or face litigation, and has made plans for another round of house-to-house registration training to commence during the coming weekend.

Public Relations Officer (PRO), Yolanda Ward, has said that plans have already been made for the training exercise. On April 2, 2019, in a letter to Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, Opposition Member of Parliament, Anil Nandlall, through his firm, A. Nandlall & Associates, and on behalf of Opposition-nominated Commissioner Robeson Benn, wrote a pre-litigation letter to the Commission.

The letter threatened legal action against GECOM, if it does not cease preparation for house-to-house registration within the next seven days from the date it was penned. The letter was carbon-copied to GECOM Chairman, Justice (Ret’d) James Patterson, and intimated that in the event the exercise was carried out, it would be regarded as “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 purposes of this exercise,” Nandlall wrote.

He would later add: “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.”
Asked Monday about GECOM’s position on the matter, Ward said that as far as she knew, the demand had not been adhered to, but the Commission continues to act on the majority decision in February 2019 to continue with its 2019 work programme.

Questioned whether the matter has been discussed by the Commission as yet, she reminded the interviewer of the walkout staged Tuesday by Opposition-nominated Commissioners before discussions could commence, which exercise was linked to disagreement on whether the statutory meeting was a new one or a continuation of the previous meeting.

“As you know, last week the meeting was aborted again. That item was not on the agenda to be discussed, and I think that’s where some of the opposition-nominated commissioners walked out of the meeting again,” Ward said, adding: “I am not sure if it’s on the agenda for tomorrow [today], but I’m sure by tomorrow is when those seven days will probably expire and, as I know it, from the Commission’s standpoint, we continue with our work programme for house-to-house.”

The Commission officially commenced training 100 core trainers on Saturday, March 23, 2019, and has already begun training Assistant Registration Officers (ARO) and enumerators in several locations.

Speaking specifically about the weekend of April 6-7, Ward said: “Our training continues, and we were on the East Coast and East Bank at 20 locations. And we have trainings scheduled again for this weekend.”

Asked whether the Commission thinks the $3B exercise is “a violation the Constitution,” Ward said that contrary to Nandlall’s belief, GECOM’s actions remain guided by the Constitution.

She did say, however, that there are certain measures in place to ensure that persons, though out of the country at the time of the registration exercise, are granted the opportunity to be placed on the list of registrants.

“Registration is guided by law, and even the conduct of house-to-house registration is guided by Chapter 19:08. Even with Mr. Nandlall’s letter, where he spoke of persons being disenfranchised, I would want to not necessarily agree with that,” Ward said, adding:
“This house-to-house registration is generating a new National Register of Registrants. So, once you are in place at the time of registration, you will be registered at your house, but that doesn’t mean that because you’re not registered during this exercise that it doesn’t present any other opportunity for you to be registered.

Our continuous claims-and-objections and registration exercises will continue, but it’s just that the Commission has made a decision to develop a whole new National Register of Registrants, which is the database, for a number of reasons which they’ve identified.”
The Commissioners are expected to meet again today for their statutory meeting to perhaps discuss the foregoing and other matters, as the last several consecutive meetings ended abruptly due to walkouts staged by Opposition-nominated Commissioners.