No need to file evidence from claims and objections to GECOM to prove bloated voters list- Norton

Last Updated on Tuesday, 4 October 2022, 21:21 by Denis Chabrol

Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton on Tuesday said his coalition of A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) did not need to collect the names of deceased persons to present to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to prove that the voters list is bloated.

“We didn’t have to do claims and objections. It wasn’t tactical. First of all, you have a bloated list. Why are we seeking to take people off of a bloated list?”, he told Demerara Waves Online News during a news conference. Though his party collected information, he said there would be need for birth and death certificates to go through with the claims and objections process.

Chief Elections Officer of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Vishnu Persaud told Demerara Waves Online News on Tuesday that there were 3,011 claims to be entered on the national database of registrants and 18 objections, nine of which were denied and the remainder upheld.

Mr Norton said the “stark reality” was that Guyana’s population of 750,000 persons and a voters list of 682,000 which defies logic. He insisted that the voters list could not be cleansed of the names of deceased and migrants by claims and objections. “We need a clean voters list, a well-sanitised voters list and claims and objections with all the limitations cannot do it,” he said.

The People’s National Congress Reform-led coalition continues to maintain that there was voter impersonation in the March 2, 2020 general and regional elections whose recounted results were declared in favour of the People’s Progressive Party Civic five months later in August of that year.

Mr Norton, meanwhile, acknowledged that there were opposition scrutineers at polling stations who ticked off the names of voters on a folio after their identification cards were checked and they were given ballot paper but said “”many things” happened that created difficulties. Those included election operatives who were PPP activists who did not allow for a comparison of pictures with would-be voters and instead had said that was the duty of polling clerks. “On the day of election there was no mechanism and even if there is, it was not honoured,” he said. He recommended that in the future the opposition would insist on scrutineers being allowed to compare electors pictures with the persons who present themselves to cast ballots and “either agree or object.”

He said after the 2020 polling day, the coalition had submitted more than 600 names of persons to GECOM who were either dead or out of the country and could not have voted.