House-to-house registration will not make the Govt. legal after Sept. 18

Jul 31, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

It is being reported that some 50,000 persons have been registered by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) during house-to-house registration. This works out to just around 25,000 persons per week and assuming an estimated 500,000 persons are to be registered, we are looking at a five-month exercise.
To that must be added a claims and objections period and then other verification exercises, and we are looking at least seven months before elections can be held. This would take us past January, which is way beyond the September 18, 2019 deadline.
House-to-house registration may be the best way to produce a clean voters’ list, but it is also the best way to de-register those who have migrated or are studying abroad or have gone on a holiday. What those who are urging house-to house registration are not pointing out is just how fraudulent elections can result if the existing voters’ list is sanitised via a claims and objections period.
How is someone going to vote for another person who is not around? First, they would have to obtain the person’s identification card. Second, if per chance they obtain that card, they would have to look exactly like that person to get past the polling agents and all the party scrutineers that are in the polling station.
How can there be multiple voting? How can someone vote for someone on the list who has either migrated or is temporarily out of the country? It would mean that they would have to remove the indelible ink which is used to stain their fingers – any voter knows that this ink stays visible for more than a month sometimes.
All these excuses have been made in the past to delay the holding of elections. And as has been pointed out, it is difficult for fraud to take place during the casting of the ballot. Even after the ballots have been counted there are systems of checks and balances which have worked for elections since 2001.
House-to-house registration has started and no one knows whether those persons who are being registered have had to produce their identification cards or birth certificates or marriage certificates as the case may be.
GECOM is not announcing to the public what documents are required. All they are saying is that there have been cases where their staff is being chased out. Well, if the public does not know who is doing the registration; if the opposition party scrutineers are not present, then there is going to be little confidence in the process. What is there in place to guard against foreign nationals and underage persons being registered unlawfully?
House-to-house registration is going to take Guyana into a greater constitutional crisis. The country is already in a crisis, because even though the government has been resigned by operation of law, the government is not admitting whether Cabinet has been meeting, and if it is meeting, it means that any decision emanating from it is unlawful.
Public officers are going to find themselves in a quandary if they have to carry out a Cabinet directive. Cabinet is not supposed to be meeting. And anything coming out of Cabinet is illegal.
House-to-house registration will also most definitely put Guyana outside of the September 18 2019 deadline by which elections are likely to be held. In addition, since the opposition is not going to extend the life of the government, which should have expired since March 21, 2019, there is a real possibility now that come September 18, 2019, the government will be illegal.
House-to-house registration may produce a clean list, but it will not make the government or GECOM in compliance with the constitution. Guyana is headed into deep trouble!

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)

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House-to-house registration will not make the Govt. legal after Sept. 18

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