AFC to boycott local govt elections over bloated voters list; APNU remains tight-lipped

Last Updated on Thursday, 20 October 2022, 21:41 by Denis Chabrol

Ms. Cathy Hughes.

The Alliance For Change (AFC) on Thursday night said it would be boycotting the March 2023 Local Government Elections (LGE) over concerns about a padded voters list, but the People’s National Congress Reform-led A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) stayed clear of saying what it would do.

“If we are going to have any elections, if we are going to talk about democracy, we must have a system that everybody has confidence in. If not, you’ll have half the population unhappy and what kind of actions would you have as a result of that,” AFC Chairman Cathy Hughes told Demerara Waves Online News.

She said her party preferred to register its disgust about the list which the combined opposition said was bloated with the names of deceased persons and emigrants.

She said her party was unprepared to go to local or general elections with a flawed voters list, adding that Guyanese should be more interested that the process should be deemed free and fair. “Why aren’t we more concerned about the people of Guyana saying at the end of the day after election that ‘I endorse these results because I have confidence in the system’.” she said.

Efforts to obtain a comment from Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton were unsuccessful, but party spokeswoman  Shaneika Haynes restated that he said at this week’s news conference “that he will state his position on the participation of LGE at the time the party’s involved deem appropriate.”

Local Government Minister Nigel Dharamlall has notified the Guyana Elections Commission that, based on its workplan, LGE would be held on March 13, 2023.

Asked whether the AFC was not worried that it would be ceding political space in many of the 10 town councils and 80 neighbourhood councils to the People’s Progressive Party and losing the opportunity to hold that party’s councillors accountable, guard against corruption and discrimination, she said ultimately what mattered was pressing the case for fair and democratic elections. “You’re asking us to go into councils and guard against corruption and to be a watchdog but you don’t want them to make the same stance when it comes to entering an election which we know there have been consistent problems and issues and concerns,” Ms Hughes.

Back in 2018, the AFC had contested the LGE separately following “inconclusive negotiations” with APNU. As 2022 ends, it is left to be seen whether the AFC would go ahead with its threat to break away from the coalition if APNY fails to address a number of outstanding concerns.

The AFC and APNU have been referring to the several recommendations in international election observer mission reports that the bloated voters list needs to be addressed. While the opposition has said that it would be ready to amend the constitution and the legislation to provide for a clean voters list and use of biometrics at polling stations.

The People’s Progressive Party and the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) have referred to a High Court decision that states that it would be unconstitutional to remove the names of persons from the national database of registrants.

The preliminary voters list contains the names of more than 680,000 persons while Guyana’s population is an estimated 750,000.

GECOM data shows that 460,352 valid votes were cast in the March 2, 2020 general election out of 660,998 listed eligible voters. In the 2015 general election, 415,788 of the 583,444 eligible voters cast their ballots.