Speaker rejects APNU+AFC motion for clean voters list

Last Updated on Monday, 7 November 2022, 12:17 by Denis Chabrol

Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton’s effort to seek parliamentary approval a motion for constitutional and legal amendments to allow for a clean voters list was Monday turned down by House Speaker Manzoor Nadir.

“For a matter to qualify under this particular item, the issue of definite, urgent public importance are necessary and it’s an issue that also that’s upcoming and I consider this motion at this time not of the urgency that requires this debate so I would be unable to allow the motion to proceed further than this,” Mr Nadir told Mr Norton.

Parliamentarians for A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) subsequently walked out, leaving behind debates on several laws including one that establishes the Constitutional Reform Commission (CRC).

He referred to the  recommendations by several observer missions that steps be taken to cleanse the voters list. The Opposition Leader cited the fact that while Guyana’s population is 750,000 persons the list has 682,000 names and United States Homeland Security statistics show that more than 54,000 persons have migrated to the US over the past five years. “That suggest that it cannot be a credible list,” he  told the National Assembly, adding that “it should be obvious to most that the list has to be cleaned.”

Monday’s move to have a motion debated was APNU+AFC’s latest in a string to pressure government into giving into demands for the voters list to be cleansed of the names of dead persons and migrants. Later Monday, amendments to the Representation of the People Act  were  expected to be debated to allow, for among other things, the mandatory provision of the names of deceased persons by the General Registrar to the Guyana Elections Commission so that there names can be taken off the national database of register of registrants.

The Opposition Leader, accompanied by APNU and AFC parliamentarians, said they walked out of the National Assembly because of the refusal of the government to allow debate on the voters list motion. high cost of  living, increasing poverty, alleged corruption by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo and several other motions. “The PPP continues to make the National Assembly an institution that does not serve the people of Guyana” and “the government is not democratic and they have no interest in or commitment to parliamentary democracy.”

APNU+AFC has been mounting weekly protests outside GECOM and issuing repeated calls for the cleansing of the list and the use of biometric systems at polling stations to avoid voter impersonation. However, the People’s Progressive Party has maintained that there are sufficient safeguards at polling stations to prevent voter impersonation.