Leader of the Alliance For Change Nigel Hughes and a delegation met Monday, October 7, 2024 with Katherine Beamer and Barbara Feinstein of the Department of State (DoS), USA. The meeting was held at the DoS Washington office.
The party in a release said at the meeting Hughes highlighted a number of issues relating to Guyana’s development and the rule of law.
The AFC said high on the agenda was the need for a new registration process ahead of Guyana’s next Regional and General Elections and the production of a new list of electors. This is in keeping with recommendations from several of the Observer Missions of the 2020 Polls, the party recalled. The next elections are constitutionally due next year.
Local, regional and international observers to 2020 General and Regional Elections derided the Electoral List, which then represented more than 90% of the nation’s population.
CARICOM in its 2020 Report on the Elections said “As a minimum condition of electoral reform, the Team recommends the urgent need for the total re-registration of all voters in Guyana. It is clear that given the state of the voter registration of the country that Guyana was not adequately prepared for the 2020 poll. Yet circumstances beyond the control of the Commission precluded this preparedness. It therefore behooves the Commission to create a new voter registry especially given the suspicion that the 2020 register was bloated, a suspicion which is not without merit.”
The current list is almost equal to the population which is approximately 750,000 at the last published census. When Guyanese went to Local Government Elections in 2023 the List of Electors had 684,354 names, the equivalent of over 91% of Guyana’s population
The AFC said the team also discussed with the State Department areas for increased cooperation between Guyana and the United States, especially on the areas of capacity building in the public sector and state institutions increased trade, fiscal management and accountability and natural resource management.
Hughes took the opportunity to raise with the state department officials recent actions of the US government to sanction Guyanese, and the likelihood of further similar actions, the party shared.
Katharine Beamer is the Director in the Office of Caribbean Affairs, Department of State and Barbara Feinstein is Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, State Department.
Hughes was accompanied by Chairman of the Party David Patterson, Advisor Professor Shamir Ally, Catherine Hughes, Laura George and Collin Haynes.
The AFC is in the US for a number of meetings and public engagements. The Party sad it has held successful engagements with the Guyanese diaspora in Brooklyn and Queens, New York and will be meeting with those in Washington and Florida.
