PPP, WPA ask Carter to intercede

(As part of observances for its 30th anniversary, Stabroek News will be reproducing snippets from its earlier years on page four of each day’s newspaper.) by Sharief Khan OPPOSITION parties are calling on former US President Jimmy Carter to again intercede with President Desmond Hoyte to help prevent rigging of the coming general elections.

The WPA yesterday faxed Carter urging him to dispatch a mission to help thwart possible fiddling with the electoral roll through house-to- house enumeration which begins in one week. Opposition Leader Dr Cheddi Jagan has also written Carter advising him that the ruling PNC is attempting to “sabotage and derail” electoral reform agreements he reached with President Desmond Hoyte last October.

And Elections Commission Chairman Sir Harold Boilers yesterday slammed down the telephone, refusing to “make any statement to anybody from Stabroek News”, after this newspaper tried to get him to respond to opposition fears about the voter registration. Chief Elections Officer Mr Ronald Jacobs could not be reached to react to complaints from the PPP and WPA about obstacles to their involvement in the registration.

PPP spokesman, Mr Moses Nagamootoo, said the Carter Center and other observer groups planning to monitor the coming poll should “take an urgent hand in light of what is happening”. He and WPA spokesman, Dr Rupert Roopnarine, separately pointed out that Carter Center had participated and assisted in voter registration in Panama and Nicaragua to ensure accurate lists were drawn up.

Nagamootoo said Jagan has informed Carter by fax that government’s alleged “delaying tactics” and sidestepping the agreed reforms are “creating an unstable political situation”. Jagan has also asked Carter to return to Guyana “as soon as possible”.

The PPP and WPA have had informal talks on strategy to tackle the registration and Roopnarine said his party was trying to assemble scrutineers without getting vital information from the Registration Centre. Both parties have no idea about how the scrutineers will be allowed to work. “We do not know, for instance, if one scrutineer will be allowed for each registration officer, or each division,” Roopnarine said.

The PPP, up to yesterday, had received no reply from Jacobs on several points its representative, Mr Feroze Mohamed, wrote him on. The PPP claims the Elections Commission and the Registration Centre have breached regulations for the enumeration including sub-dividing and distinguishing Registration Districts.

It also points out there is no public information on the number of enumerators to be employed, the number of registration divisions and the demarcations of each district. “This situation has made it almost impossible for the PPP and other opposition parties to appoint and properly place their scrutineers”, the party charged.

Jacobs now has six days to receive the lists of scrutineers from parties and to provide ID cards for them. The PPP pointed out, “given the time factor and the vast areas to be covered in some regions, as well as considerable transportation and communication difficulties, it is clear that one will be hard pressed to get ID cards into the hands of scrutineers in time”.

Roopnarine said the WPA yesterday faxed a “very long” letter to Carter setting out the “foot-dragging and bad face” on the reforms Hoyte had promised. He said the WPA urged Carter to have his Center be in on the house-to-house enumeration from the beginning to end.

Unless the Center does this, “they are not likely to see the kind of political administrative climate under which we have to operate,” he said.