GECOM’s Alexander rubbishes Jagdeo’s house-to-house rigging claims

Last Updated on Thursday, 21 March 2019, 20:23 by Writer

One of Guyana’s governing coalition-appointed Elections Commissioners, Vincent Alexander, has slammed Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo for accusing the Commission of plotting to rig the upcoming general elections through house-to-house registration.

“All that he has said is so unsubstantiated. It is unbelievable that he is an ex-president of this country,” Alexander told Demerara Waves Online News.

Jagdeo earlier this week charged that GECOM and the coalition government were conspiring not to register at least 10 persons per polling station in his People’s Progressive Party (PPP) strongholds to result in a loss of about 20,000 votes, register persons multiple times, abandon fingerprint cross-matching, and register foreigners who would be given fake Guyana birth certificates.

But Alexander, who is a strong advocate of house-to-house registration to refresh the voters’ list, labelled the Opposition Leader the “epitome of the silly season” who was bent on “doing all within his might to incite the population”.

The GECOM Commissioner said house-to-house registration would be scrutinised by the political parties to ensure that no voter fraud occur. “On the one hand he (Jagdeo) talks about robust mechanisms and now he seems not to appreciate that there would be robust mechanisms for house-to-house registration,” he said.

On Jagdeo’s claim that GECOM would not be using biometrics, Alexander said “biometrics are part of our process. There is no question about the use of biometrics.”

The ruling coalition and its three elections commissioners have been pushing for house-to-house registration to remove the names of emigrants.

However, Jagdeo’s People’s Progressive Party has said the current voters’ list, which was used at Local Government Elections four months ago without any major concerns about electoral malpractice, was good enough for the general elections occasioned by last December’s passage of a no-confidence motion by the National Assembly.

President David Granger is expected to announce a date for general elections shortly.