Stalemate continues… GECOM no closer to election date

Sep 04, 2019 News

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“We have not arrived at any final decisions.”

“There’s nothing. We’re no nearer to elections…”
“A lot of our time was spent on generalizations rather than moving to the specifics…”
“Another wasted day, wasted discussions. We are nowhere closer to decisions of holding elections.”
Those are some of the comments coming from Commissioners of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) after yesterday’s weekly statutory meeting at the Kingston Headquarters.
Hot on the agenda for many Guyanese is the subject of the merger announced by GECOM of the data garnered from the suspended House-to-House exercise and the National Register of Registrants (NRR).
Commissioner Sase Gunraj said yesterday that the proposals that were made, relative to the merger, make for a very lengthy processes.
He said that data from House-to-House is unverified data, “and we have to be very careful how we treat that data.”

Commissioner Vincent Alexander said that the Commissioner discussed cross-matching of the data, and how that would be done.
The political opposition had indicated its opposition to the merger, citing concerns that thousands of names could be duplicated, and that it would take way too long to sanitize the list.
The conversation about the cross-matching process was a “holdover”, according to Commissioner Charles Corbin.
“We needed to get a report from the team we sent out to Jamaica to do an assessment of the issue of cross-matching… The team is back. We did get a report and there were also some developments with respect to the original supplier of the service.”
The Commission also discussed the production of ID cards. Gunraj provided that the shortest possible period being looked at for the production of ID cards, for instance, is 92 days. The longer limit, he provided, would be 140 days.
While he acknowledges that the production of ID cards overlaps with several other processes, he doesn’t believe that GECOM should focus on that at this time, adding that it stands to reason that those processes would take an “alarmingly long time”.
He contends that this should not happen because all of the Courts which have ruled on the issues springing from the No Confidence Motion of December 21, 2018 in the past year have, in their rulings, declared the need for General and Regional Elections to be held in a timely fashion.
“Every ruse, every stratagem, every resort is being attempted to further delay elections.” Gunraj said.
The Commission had announced that it would move to an extensive period of claims and objections before extracting a Preliminary List of Electors (PLE).
Gunraj said that a time-frame for claims and objections has not been discussed; that “there is no appetite at GECOM for the holding of elections.”
Corbin explained that a lot of time was wasted on generalised discussion, instead of on specific issues.
According to Alexander, “We have not finalized timelines. We’re trying to settle some principles. Once they’re settled, we’ll define timelines based on proposals coming from the Secretariat.
The Commission will meet again on Friday at 11:00 am.
Corbin provided that “at that time, we will actually have, before us, proposals by the Secretariat.”
Those proposals, he said, take all the information that is now available into consideration, like the report on cross-matching.
“What we expect to be doing on Friday is to focus on the specific task that has to be completed and the time it will take to execute those tasks. Only when that is done will we have an overall picture of what kind of timeline we’re looking towards.”
“[Then] we will be able to work and discuss actual time for the task that has to be done in preparation and delivery of the elections.”
GECOM had noted, in a release, that “Cognizant of all that has transpired over the past months, GECOM has an obligation to produce a credible Official List of Electors (OLE) in the first instance and ultimately credible elections within the shortest possible time.”
As such, Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission, Justice Claudette Singh S.C., had declared, after a vote of the Commission, that House-to-House Registration must be brought to an end.
GECOM has tallied that an estimated 370,740 persons have been registered in the House-to-House exercised that ended last Saturday.
GECOM’s Public Relations Officer, Yolanda Ward told Kaieteur News during a brief telephone interview on Monday that the Commission considers the figure a tentative one at this point.
“We are still in the process of checking and cross referencing. That figure could be more or less but we are still checking.” Ward stated.

 

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