GEORGETOWN, Guyana, November 23The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is calling on all stakeholders “to desist from peddling misinformation and disinformation,” saying this could seriously impact citizen’s participation at the upcoming Local Government Elections (LGE) scheduled for March next year.
In a statement, GECOM said that it had taken note of a recent protest action outside its Registration Offices and that some of the protestors had carried placards questioning the integrity of the voter’s list, among other concerns.
It said that based on the protest, members of the public “could easily form the impression that the Registers of Voters (ROVs) are overdue.”
But GECOM said it has “posted the Revised List of Electors (RLE), in the public domain for scrutiny in compliance with the Regulation which mandates that this be done for the statutorily required twenty-one (21) days” and that posting of the RLE precedes extraction of lists of electors for Local Government Elections.
GECOM said it is “currently implementing” the tasks delineated sequentially in its Work Plan for the conduct of the LGE, which is scheduled to be held on March 13 next year.
It said on the issue of calls for a “sanitized voters’ list,” it is imperative that we reiterate GECOM’s operations continue to be guided by the applicable Constitutional and legal provisions.
“In this regard, it is obligatory for us to repeat that the eligibility requirement for registration is that one must be a Guyanese citizen by birth, descent, or naturalization; or a citizen of a Commonwealth country living in Guyana for one year or more.
“Providing persons met those requirements and have been registered, their registration in the National Register of Registrants (NRR) is and remains legitimate. Accordingly, any removal of their names from the NRR, without legal basis, would be unlawful and unconstitutional.”
GECOM said that existing legislation provides that the removal of names from the NRR can be done only through the established methodology, including the receipt of monthly death reports from the General Registers Office (GRO) and through the Objections aspect of any Claims and Objections exercise.
Opposition legislators have been calling for a “clean voters list” ahead of the LGE, with at least one political party, the Alliance for Change (AFC), saying it will not contest the polls under the existing conditions.
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