New GECOM continuous registration exercise underway
As part of preparations for the upcoming Local Government Elections (LGE), the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has started a new cycle of continuous registration.
The new registration exercise, which began on May 21st, will run until July 15th, 2018. Persons needing to register are being advised to visit the office in their respective communities between 8 am and 5 pm from Monday to Thursday, 6 am to 4 pm on Friday and 10 am to 2 pm on weekends and holidays.
There are 27 registration centres located across the country.There continues to be concerns about the vetting of the voters’ list to ensure that persons who are deceased are not included.
Stabroek News was told that there will always be concerns about the size of the list, given that the estimated population is over 700,000, while the list stands at around 600,000. A source said that this is evidence that it has more people than it should.
While it was noted that the excess may be deceased persons, the source said their names can only be removed by a death report, which is presented by the General Register Office (GRO) to the commission on a monthly basis. The source said that very often the names in those reports do not match the records of the commission and therefore cannot be removed from the database. In cases where there is a match, those names are flagged and are removed.
Stabroek News was told that the commission at the moment is exploring a variety of methods that can be used to fully utilise the death reports.
When the commission’s Chairman, Justice (retired) James Patterson was asked earlier this month about the possibility of house-to-house registration or the vetting of the list, his response was “when that phase arises, it will be made public. The commission hadn’t decided as far as I know.”
Sources had indicated to this newspaper previously that house-to-house registration is not an option that is being considered at the moment.
The PNCR in April called for house-tohouse registration, saying that it would clean up the country’s voters’ list. “Let us truly sanitise the list of electors by having ‘house to house’ registration, hence all those who are alive will be on the list,” a statement from the party said.
PNCR General Secretary and Chief Scrutineer for the governing APNU+AFC coalition Amna Ally later repeated much of the statement to this newspaper, while saying that her party will ensure that if there is house-to-house registration, it will be a transparent process.
Her party believes that the transparent process would help to assure all parties that the list is in no way compromised and the names of dead persons are removed.