Any chorus for a cause

Aug 15, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The ruling yesterday by the Chief Justice that persons who are already registered cannot be deregistered by virtue of them being abroad, has effectively neutered the arguments which the APNU+AFC and its echoers have been making about the necessity for house-to-house registration.
The APNU+AFC shamelessly used the demand for house-to-house registration as a ploy not to go to elections within the three months period for elections following a no-confidence motion.
The coalition government said that the house-to- house registration was necessary to remove the more than 200,000 errors which were on the Official List of Electors, the very list which it did not find fault in November when it contested local government elections.
The APNU+AFC’s argument was that house-to-house registration was necessary to sanitize the List of these 200,000 errors – persons presumably who were dead or migrated either permanently or temporarily. It matters not that there were effective controls to prevent these persons from voting. According to the APNU+AFC, the best way to purge the list of these massive errors was to have house-to-house errors.
The APNU+AFC has nor presented a shred of evidence that the list is seriously flawed. It did not need to. All it has to say is that the sky is yellow and its supporters will pick up this chant – any chorus for a cause.
GECOM went ahead with house-to-house registration even though the Opposition was contending that it was more effective, less costly and quicker for the list to the sanitized through a claims and objections period.
Yesterday’s decision of the Chief Justice means that the coalition government no longer has a leg to stand on in terms of its justification for house-to-house registration. The Chief Justice has ruled that persons cannot be deregistered by virtue of them being out of the country during the registration exercise. So why then have house-to-house registration if these persons cannot be removed?
The only reason why house-to-house registration would have made sense was if it was permissible for absentee residents to be taken off the list. But this can no longer happen since, according to reports, the Court ruled that this would not be lawful.
Why then waste billions of dollars on house-to house registration when all those names with which the list was padded can now no longer be removed. It makes no sense now to have house-to-house registration. It will be a waste of money and a waste of time. GECOM is likely to meet today and it should take the decision, in light of the decision of the Chief Justice, to discontinue house-to- house registration. A Claims and Objections Period can then be launched and if GECOM finds its necessary a sample house-to-house verification of the new List of Elections can be undertaken to satisfy the naysayers and those who still harbor suspicions about the integrity of the list. But stop the charade about the need for house-to-to house registration.
Take the remaining money if left from the house-to- house registration and fix the New Amsterdam Hospital before it becomes the unofficial mortuary of Region Six. Fix the drainage system before Guyana becomes the Venice of the Caribbean. Take some of those billions and pay the teachers properly.
But forget house-to-house registration. The justification for it no longer exists.

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