A compromise is possible

Jul 07, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The government’s insistence on house-to-house registration is a desperate political gambit to delay the holding of elections, thereby frustrating the consequences of the no-confidence motion which the Caribbean Court of Justice has ruled was validly passed.
APNU+AFC was never keen of holding elections within the three months deadline dictated by the Constitution. A cabal within the government, and representing both APNU and the AFC, cannot bear the thought of not being in government, and therefore are prepared to concoct reasons not to comply with the provisions of the Constitution.
As such, it has had to find reasons for not holding the elections. It sought to do so through strange mathematics, legal challenges, and now the insistence that the voters’ list is flawed with as many as 200,000 errors. Its supporters have gullibly picked up the new anthem about the house-to house registration being necessary for the holding of credible elections.
Those egging on these supporters would have the nation believe that there is precedent for such action. They have pointed to house-to-house enumeration which delayed the holding of the 1991 elections. They do not explain, however, the context in which this exercise was undertaken, and the fact that it forced the delay of elections by two years and required a constitutional amendment to extend the life of the then PNCR regime.
The PNC, voted into office with the support of the United Force, had rigged elections in 1968, 1973, 1980 and 1985. Peter D’Aguiar, a former ally of the PNC, had declared of the 1968 elections: “To call it an election is to give it a name it does not deserve; it was a seizure of power by fraud, not election.” The 1973 elections was branded as a “fairy tale elections”.
The British Parliamentary Group of Observers described the 1980 elections as being more “crooked than barbed wire.” The 1985 elections were the worst, being marred by blatant fraud, intimidation and violence.
The key to the rigging of all four of those elections was the use of a highly defective voters’ list. It was against this background that the opposition railed against a fraudulent preliminary list of voters for elections in 1991. The list was found to be heavily padded and this led to a decision to have house-to-house enumeration.
The Preliminary Voters’ List (PVL) which emerged from that process was found to be highly defective. Three sets of tests confirmed the high rate of defects. First, there was an in-house computer test which found a 35% error rate. The Elections Commission itself had discovered 50,000 duplications. And a test conducted later by the Elections Assistance Bureau, a non-governmental organisation, had unearthed a high number of errors. Even Eusi Kwayana had to go on a fast to demand “real” elections. Subsequently, a People’s Test was conducted which found a mere 4.4% error.
The list is once again the centre of controversy, one that is contrived. No PVL has yet been published. But the government says that it can contain as many as 200,000 errors. As was done in the past, international assistance can be sought to conduct a test on the list.
No list is perfect. What is important is to determine if it can be rectified through a claims and objections period or if the list is so fundamentally flawed that it requires a new house-to-house registration. No one has asked for house-to-house verification rather than registration – a distinction, which the Department of Public Information does not comprehend.
If the list contains 200,000 errors, it would mean that Guyana’s system of registration needs a complete overhaul, since any list, which cannot be rectified through a cycle of claims and objections would be considered symptomatic of a disastrous registration system. It also means that the 2018 local government elections was equally conducted on a fraudulent list.
The government says that it wants a credible list. The opposition says that a cycle of claims and objections is sufficient to sanitise the list.
A compromise is possible. A Preliminary Voters’ List should be generated and the assistance of the UNDP sought (as was done in the past) to conduct a sample verification test of the list. The test should be undertaken to establish the validity of the claims that there are some 200,000 errors, including dead persons. This exercise can take a mere two weeks to complete.
The government, however, is likely to raise another bogey. It feels that the list is padded with overseas-based Guyanese. The Carter Centre has proposed a way around this problem. They have called for a list to be generated of these persons and used separately. This will remove the concerns about strangers voting for such persons.
The government has shown some favour towards this idea. But the government also had initially shown favour towards accepting the No-Confidence Motion. We know how this turned out.

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