Eligible voters now 738,484; no opposition objections given- GECOM official

Last Updated on Sunday, 9 February 2025, 21:32 by Writer

The number of eligible voters now at 738,484 continues to fuel opposition calls for the introduction of digital fingerprinting for registration and verification of electors at polling stations to ensure credible and widely acceptable results.

A senior official of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has told Demerara Waves Online News that this latest figure as of Friday, February 6, 2025, is based on the recently wrapped-up claims and objections period.

The qualifying date is December 31, 2024.

Official figures show that the total application for registration during the Claims and Objections period was 4,255. Seven of the nine objections were upheld after hearings.

Demerara Waves Online News was also informed that there were 1,615 applications for transfer and 421 for change or correction of particulars.

The GECOM official said there were nine objections, none of which was from the political opposition because none was received.

Opposition Leader, Aubrey Norton at the weekend said his People’s National Congress Reform-led A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) submitted objections from the claims and objections, but he declined to provide any numbers immediately. “We’ve provided that information to the Elections Commission and at some stage I will do a complete press conference on this whole question of what happened in that whole process,” he said. He said he could not provide “arbitrary” figures and preferred to have the information from those who were collecting data.

At the 2020 general elections, 72.58 percent or 480,061 votes were cast from a list that had totalled 661,378.

Mr Norton dismissed the GECOM Chairman’s position that digitalizing fingerprints could not be done for the 2025 general and regional elections because of the need to hire a technical expert to advise the commission, procure equipment and train staff among other tasks.

He said there were concerns that a number of the existing fingerprints that GECOM had collected over the years would not be useable, but the PNCR believed that over a four-month period those persons could be contacted and new prints taken. “One of the things we intend to do is to point out how it could be done at some stage because I believe it could be done,” he said.

Contrary to Justice Singh, he believed that preparations for the polls and implementing a digital fingerprint system for registration and voter verification at polling stations could be done at the same time. Mr Norton did not regard as “a big issue” the delay of the general and regional elections by a month to facilitate the introduction of that biometric system. “We need credible elections. We need elections in which people can trust the results and after the elections there are no confrontations over the results,” the Opposition Leader said.

Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, for his part, said that process could take years and the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) would not be risking the exclusive use of digitalised fingerprints to identify voters because the High Court would invalidate the election if even one voter challenges that process.

The GECOM Chairman said the election laws allow the commission to determine the means by which it would capture registrants’ data, but it would be unconstitutional to use digitalized fingerprints as the sole means by which to identify electors. Ms. Singh said she was also concerned about the absence of legislation to protect the digitalized fingerprints.

The government is yet to operationalise the 2023 Data Protection Act.

The opposition APNU, Alliance For Change and the Working People’s Alliance have been waging a campaign for biometrics to prevent multiple voting and voter impersonation. However, the ruling PPPC continues to maintain that there are sufficient safeguards such as representatives from contesting political parties at each polling station to verify electors and that the votes are counted at the place of poll.