2015 PPP/C wanted New Voters List, in 2022 President Ali says List is not the problem

LGE is constitutionally due every three years. The last was held in 2018.

Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Aubrey Norton, recently announced the need for a new Voters List before Guyanese go back to the polls. The A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC), in a recent press statement, drew attention to the fact the “OLE for the 2020 General and Regional Elections contained 660,998 names, which represented approximately 85 per cent of the entire population of Guyana.” Highlighting the anomaly, the Opposition said, “no other country in the world has a voters list that is more than 80% of the population. This is an absolute abomination!”

Every international observer mission that participated in the 2020 Elections ridiculed the size of the List and urged Guyana to clean up the List.

In 2015, after the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) lost the Elections, they called for “A new voters’ list to be compiled on the basis of a fresh house to house enumeration.” President Irfaan Ali, in a recent statement said, “The List is not the problem.” In 2022 the party’s position conflicts with its position in 2015.

The undermentioned represents the reforms the PPP/C called for in October 2015:

1. Enhanced bio-metrics
2. Electronic voting
3. Bringing the GECOM Secretariat under the purview of the Commission to enable the Commission to give the Secretariat general orders and directions.
4. Recruitment of GECOM’s key election officials such as Returning Officers and Presiding Officers and Poll Clerks through improved transparent and impartial processes.
5. A new voters’ list to be compiled on the basis of a fresh house to house enumeration.
6. Review the process that allows for voting by the Disciplined Services.
7. Amend the relevant sections of the Representation of the People Act to allow for the enactment of appropriate legislation to facilitate implementation of agreed reforms.
8. Selection of a new Chairman of GECOM

Shadow Minister of Local Government and Regional Development and a key player in the 2020 National Recount, Mr. Ganesh Mahipaul, pointed out:- “Elections 2020 were marred with anomalies, abnormalities and irregularities as documented in the Observation Reports following the recount of all ballot boxes and everyone that participated in the National Recount would agree with me that the bloated voters list is responsible for what I concluded was systemic fraud in elections 2020.”

Mahipaul is making the call for a clean Voters List, not in defiance of the constitutional requirement for LGE, but out of necessity for a clean list that would come after “house to house registration…so that the real will of the people can be reflected in their representative and government.” LGE has been postponed before and in fact was not held for almost 20 years.