This mode of action is long overdue

Nov 03, 2019 Letters

Dear Editor,

After the appointment of Justice Singh to chair Gecom, one would have expected to see the end of the controversy that had emanated from Gecom since the NCM. That did not happen. After her appointment, I presumed that Justice Singh took her time and studied the system before calling an end to H2H registration.
I assume that Justice Singh after some meticulous planning with the commissioners, provided the president with the end of February as the possible timeline for Gecom’s readiness for elections. It is no secret that the Commission had agreed on 35 days for claims and objections in that original plan. This was apparently, unknowingly to the Chairwoman, changed to 49 days by the CEO or the Secretariat. In what looked like a damage control scenario the chair had to sign for a compromised 42 days.
A few days later Madam Chair was called on to change an edict issued by the Secretariat. The edict in part, “every person whose name appears on the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) must visit the Registration office in their respective area with their National Identification Card to verify their registration record in order to be included in the Official List of Electors OLE.” The above statement is definitely not a description of claims and objections, it is more like fresh registration. This language threatened to take the names of people who didn’t comply off the OLE. I am inclined to believe that personnel at the Secretariat would have been privileged to claims and objections from previous elections and would have known the language to describe same.
The public needs to know what methodology was used to select the personnel for Gecom Secretariat. Was it the same political party based as with the commissioners? Was it simply the signing of a document of non allegiance to a political party? If it’s the latter, it doesn’t seem to be working.
I hate the idea of Gecom been politicized down to the bone but given the narrative and actions emanating from the Secretariat recently, I have no choice but to support this idea. Those two incidents should make Madam Chairperson aware of mutinous elements in Gecom,s engine room (Secretariat).
The big question in contemplation by the public for sometime now is – How did the decision to incorporate the entire 370,000 names from the H2H into the NRR get past the Commission, when all that was logically needed were the new registrants, in light of the planned claims and objections? How could duplicity be avoided and what’s this nonsense about highlighting duplicitous names coming from one commissioner?
It is difficult to understand how the news of 28 thousand ID cards that were never collected was never released before at previous elections. I am inclined to believe that most of these 28,000 ID cards were lost by their owners, forgotten at Banks and business places over the years and were delivered back to Gecom HQ, while the owners got replacement.
A few days ago KN reported that Gecom the Chairperson, in response to a call from the opposition leader for her to address the public in person, said she would address the country only when decisions are made. This mode of action is long overdue. Hopefully, in her first appearance, she would trek back a little to her decision to allow the entire H2H list to be incorporated into the PLE and why it is not published on line to offer greater scrutiny.
Rudolph Singh

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