A confusing political landscape

Jul 16, 2011 Editorial

The issue that is soon to dominate the political landscape is going to centre on the demands on the period for the claims and objections leading up to the elections constitutionally due this year. And once more there is some amazement that whenever there are elections in Guyana it seems as though the architects just cannot get things right.
For more than a decade Guyana just could not seem to get the pre-elections stage correct. From as far back as the late 1980s there have been problems with the elections preparation. The then opposition objected to the elections commission and to the voters’ list and eventually agreed to a delay in the date for the elections so that their objections could be addressed.
The composition of the elections commission changed. Even some of the serving members could not return to the commission because of opposition objections. If those were to be the only problems then one might have concluded that personnel problems were the bane of the elections. Instead, the opposition wanted a new voters’ list.
And so it was that the voters’ list attracted national attention. More than twenty years ago this country has been fixing the voters’ list and to this day it just cannot seem to get it right. There was a complete overhaul of the then existing voters’ list to the extent that when the elect ions were held in 1992 there were multiple voters’ lists. People’s names appeared on one list but disappeared off the lists that were put up outside polling places.
Then came the elections of 1996 and the introductions of even more problems. People complained about multiple voting and the elections commission then introduced voting by identification cards. Confusion worst confounded. In the end the courts vitiated those elections.
Came the run up to the 2001 elections and there was more of the same. People complained and sparked a house to house registration campaign. One would have expected that the confusion would have ended there. It would appear that such hopes were misplaced. The pressure by the opposition led to yet another house to house registration and the production of new identification cards.
There were stipulations, this time around. The opposition parties found that despite the promises of the voters’ list being clean and despite assurances that no one would have been allowed to register multiple times, people ended up with as many as four different identification cards. Once more Guyana had to find money for a completely new registration.
For the past three years people knew that they needed the birth certificate as the source document. The fact that to this date many are still without the source document tells an interesting story of apathy and complacency. It tells a story of people not caring about the national registration process and the elections.
But the government cares because it recognizes that there are many people who have not registered. Surely over the past three years, had the political parties been working with the people, they would have been made aware of the absence of source documents among so many people. Even Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon contended that this current problem of people not having source documents may have resulted from a penchant of people to wait until the last minute to do anything that they should.
But it goes beyond that. The government, like the opposition, has looked at the figures and now realizes that the number of people likely to be disenfranchised could mean the difference between winning and losing the elections.
The opposition parties had made this observation some time back but their observations went unnoticed and largely ignored. Had it been heeded there would have been an extension to the period of claims and objections a long time ago.
The government now wants this period extended. The commissioners are deadlocked. Dr Steve Surujbally now has the deciding vote. Here is another side to this extension. The opposition parties see it as an opportunity by the government to delay the elections, something that has been rumoured for more than a year when people said that President Bharrat Jagdeo wanted an extension of his term in office.
Whatever the case, it seems that there is no end to conflict over the preparation of the voters’ list. Come 2016 and one can bet that some other problem would surface. Guyana has the distinction of being the only Caricom country with this type of problem.

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A confusing political landscape

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