Draft amendments to election laws to be circulated next week- Ali

Last Updated on Friday, 29 October 2021, 14:19 by Denis Chabrol

President Irfaan Ali minutes on Friday announced that draft amendments to the election laws will be circulated for public consultations next month.

He said the Attorney General Anil Nandlall was Thursday been tasked with circulating the draft laws next week to allow for six weeks of consultations. “We have to have an efficient time-frame on this,” the President told a news conference “so that we can expeditiously move forward with this.”

Emerging from the fiasco from the March 2, 2020 general and regional elections, the Guyana government had promised to amend sections of the Representation of the People Act.

The amendments, the government has said previously, would include the mandatory use of Statements of Poll to declare election results. At first tally, tally sheets had been used and these had led to a controversy especially about the accuracy and validity of the votes cast in Region Four. 

The People’s Progressive Party Civic administration had also cited the need for the laws to be amended to specifically provide for the publication of statements of poll in the newspapers.

For its part, the opposition A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change has been clamouring for a fresh voters list through house-to-house registration, something that the PPPC has resisted and instead has relied on the claims and objections period and continuous registration.