Pandering to the foibles of Guyanese

Jul 26, 2011 Editorial

Last week the Guyana Elections Commission came under scrutiny for a decision it took to extend the period of claims and objection. That extension took effect yesterday and will continue until mid-next month. This extension is intended to capture some 4,000 people who managed to secure birth certificates and so become eligible for the registration process.
For three years the commission had indicated that unless people had a birth certificate then that person would not be allowed to be registered. However, as is always the case, we are a people who dilly dally thus earning the reputation of being a people who wait until the last minute to do something.
It must be a cultural thing because ever so often we would see a rush to complete assignments or projects when the deadline approaches. It is this way with school children and university students. They can be seen rushing to complete research papers or assignments although they had ample time for the necessary preparations.
And so it was with the people who needed to get registered. They had three years to procure birth certificates if they did not have that document. Many waited until the deadline to procure the document and some never attempted to get a birth certificate until after the closure of the period of claims and objections.
The authorities should have expected this behaviour. It was the same with the collection of identification cards. The elections commission signaled long time ago that it was going to decommission the old identification cards. It even set a date for this exercise. It would seem that, that date has been shelved because many people are still to collect those new identification cards.
There are some 30,000 new cards still to be collected. When the commission announced that it was closing the distribution period at the various registration centres there was a rush. No one paid heed to the daily advertisements to uplift these cards but they descended on the centres in droves on the last day.
There are numerous other instances of people waiting until the last minute. Typical examples are the Christmas shopping and the shopping on New Year’s Eve. Traditionally, people would flock the stores on Christmas Eve. The streets in the major shopping areas are always chockfull. Traffic is reduced to a crawl and the police are kept busy. These were people who began their preparations months ago.
People are also in the last minute rush when their children have to return to school. It is indeed cultural.
The same thing happened with the birth certificate issue. There was a lot of time for people to acquire the source documents. When the deadline approached and eventually passed, people complained that they had not registered. But they only complained when asked and there is the widely held view that they were apathetic toward voting.
However, the government is prepared to spend money to facilitate people’s foibles. The count, at least the initial count, suggests that some 4,000 people are to be registered this time around. However, as the various centres opened their doors yesterday, there was the suggestion that less people would actually get registered.
But then again, there is nothing to stop a mad rush to the centres and the numbers could be much more. The extension of the claims and objection period does not stipulate the numbers who have to be registered.
The good thing is that whatever the case, the extended process will not force a postponement of the elections beyond December deadline. The officials at the elections commission are insistent that there will be no postponement.
But for this to be a reality everything must be in place. There must be the timely release of funding from Central Government, and the verification process must be completed well ahead of the completion of the National Register of Registrants.
There is still to be the production of a Code of Conduct for the politicians if people are to avoid incendiary language on the hustings. And the media, too, need to set rules of behaviour in place. Hopefully, these things would be done before December.

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Pandering to the foibles of Guyanese

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