PPP/C expresses concerns about unregistered voters

People’s Progressive Party presidential candidate Donald Ramotar, on June 24, said his party is seeking to have the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) open an avenue for unregistered persons to become registered.

Ramotar joined his political opponents in highlighting the importance of registering citizens who were not registered because of lack of source documents.

Speaking at a media briefing at the party’s headquarters, Freedom House, Ramotar said an examination of several hinterland communities has indicated that several persons were not registered because of the lack of source documents.

The party has since written GECOM in the hope of having those unregistered citizens registered before the hosting of national and regional elections, due to be held before December 28, as is constitutionally mandated.

However, should there be a re-holding of the claims and objections period that expired a few weeks ago, there is a high probability that national and regional elections would be delayed. When quizzed by the media on delaying the elections to accommodate those unregistered persons, the PPP/ C presidential hopeful said: “Talking to my experts whom I have been working with here, I don’t expect it would be pushed back for any significant period… some of my people feel it could be done fairly quickly… there would be a slight push back.” He added that he expected his party would meet with GECOM soon to explore the possibilities of having something worked out to facilitate the registration of those persons. “… [it is] in the interest of all stakeholders in this process to explore all the possibilities, and, with minimum of delay, to have these elections,” Ramotar stated.

He added that “GECOM has always done their best to try to facilitate eligible persons to have an opportunity to exercise their franchise”. The presidential hopeful noted that, from all indications, “the commission did not anticipate” the large number of persons that were not in possession of their source documents. “It appears also that it did not consider the problem of bureaucracy.”Ramotar, however, noted that “part of the problem, too, was that many people waited until the last minute to conduct their business. This was seen by the fact that, in the month-long claims and objections period, almost 17,000 persons were registered.

Meanwhile, Ramotar complimented GECOM for what he described as a “high standard” of work conducted by the organisation. But while the opposition parties have been continually sounding the fact that many persons were not registered during the recently concluded claims and objections period, they are not inclined to have those unregistered persons become registered at the expense of having national and regional elections postponed.

Meanwhile, contacted on the issue, presidential candidate of the newly-named A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), David Granger, stated his party has been emphasising that the registration process “is an obligation of central government”. “Government must get its act together so that all citizens can become registered,” Granger said. “We are not prepared to postpone elections.”