The nation anxiously awaits GECOM’s rational and lawful decision

Aug 19, 2019 Letters, News

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DEAR EDITOR,
On Wednesday last, Chief Justice Roxanne George-Wiltshire ruled, that names cannot be removed, from the National Register of Registrants, other than upon grounds stated in the Constitution and the National Registration Act and in accordance with the procedure laid down in that Act. The consequential implications are that the House to House Registration exercise, currently ongoing, is a colossal waste of billions of taxpayers’ dollars. Its principal purpose, as expressed by the erstwhile Chairman and the Government’s Commissioners of GECOM and those in Government who protagonized for it, was to remove, from the National Register and eventually the Original List of Electors, names of persons who have migrated but whose names remain on the National Register of Registrants and the Official List of Electors, which they claim result in same being “bloated”. Their ultimate intention was to scrap the current National Register of Registrants and consequently, the current Official List of Electors, and to create a new database from the data generated by the House to House Registration exercise. The definitive and conclusive impact of the Chief Justice’s ruling is to render this ultimate objective no longer attainable.
The cold hard truth is that the hundreds of thousands that GECOM claims to have registered during this House to House Registration exercise are, largely, already registered. The new ones, who have come of age, or who, though of age, were not previously registered, and registered during this process, could have easily be registered, and may still have to be re-registered, in a Claims and Objections cycle. Hence my contention that the House to House Registration exercise is duplicitous and a waste of time and money. Since this exercise was obdurately proceeded with, despite vehement opposition from the PPP/C, against the legal advice of GECOM’s in-house legal advisor and in disregard of exhortations from a visiting team of the United Nations, the issue of who will be held accountable for this wanton misuse of public funds in such an egregious manner, will have to be addressed at some point in time.
In the excerpts of Her judgement, orally rendered, the Chief Justice upheld my submissions that Articles 59 and 159 of the Constitution list the qualifications and disqualifications of electors to be registered and to vote; and that “residence”, within the State of Guyana, is not one of them. Therefore, to refuse to register a person, or to remove a registered elector from the National Register, or the Official List of Electors, on the ground that the person is not resident in Guyana, would be to add a qualification not contained in the Constitution, rendering the same ultra vires the Constitution, unconstitutional and unlawful, ultimately resulting in that person losing his/her constitutional right to vote. This was precisely the ground upon which sections of the Election Laws Act of 1996, which provided for a voter’s ID card as a qualification to vote, were struck down as being repugnant to and inconsistent with Articles 59 and 159 and therefore, unconstitutional and void in accordance with Article 8 of the Constitution, since the Constitution contained no such requirement. Article 8 of the Constitution provides: “This Constitution is the Supreme Law of Guyana and if any law is inconsistent with it, that other law shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be void.” [see Elections Petition by Esther Pereira (1997)]
In the course of Her judgement the Chief Justice, repeatedly, emphasized that the Official List of Electors can be lawfully refreshed with the Claims and Objections facility and can be used for the impending elections. On this score, it is instructive to note that the learned Chief Justice mirrored the comments made by the Chief Elections Officer/National Registration Officer, Mr. Keith Lowenfield, to the Press, on the corridors of the High Court, on July 22, 2019. In that same interlude with the Press, Mr. Lowenfield forcefully rejected the notion that the Official List of Electors was “bloated”. Mr. Lowenfield is the legal custodian of both the National Register as well as the Official List of Electors and his opinion on these matters are, ex officio, authoritatively conclusive.
In disagreeing with my contention that September 19, 2019, was the deadline for elections, in accordance with the Caribbean Court of Justice’s Consequential Orders, the Chief Justice interpreted those Consequential Orders to have pronounced, that on December 21, 2018, Article 106(6) became immediately triggered and nothing has put that “trigger” on pause, therefore, elections became due on March 21, 2019. The consequence of this pronouncement is horrendous for the Government. It means that the Government became illegal at midnight on March 21, 2019, in accordance with Article 106(7) of the Constitution.
Against the backdrop that the constitutional life of the Government has expired, the Chief Justice repeatedly admonished that GECOM is not operating in normal circumstances or “in a normal election cycle” and that GECOM is duty bound to obey the Constitution and to execute its imperatives. The Chief Justice consciously fell short of directing GECOM to refresh the current List of Electors with a suitable Claims and Objections cycle and to proceed swiftly with the holding of elections that are long constitutionally overdue. The learned Chief Justice prudently left that decision for GECOM to make.
Prior to the Chief Justice’s ruling, I wrote that there was no need for GECOM to await the ruling. I predicted that the ruling cannot alter the relevant constitutional provisions nor can it detract from, defy, contradict, or modify, the CCJ’s decision and Consequential Orders delivered in the Consolidated Appeals relating to the No Confidence motion. I did not predict wrong. The Chief Justice’s ruling has simply made the situation even more exigent. There is only one rational and lawful decision that GECOM can make in the current constitutional matrix. The quicker it is made, the better.
The nation anxiously awaits GECOM.

Mohabir Anil Nandlall, MP
Attorney-at-Law

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