Existing voters list can be used with safeguards- UK High Commissioner

Last Updated on Saturday, 12 November 2022, 17:41 by Denis Chabrol

The United Kingdom on Saturday said Guyana’s voters list was being updated and could be used to hold general elections with sufficient safeguards in place and she said based on existing rules Guyanese who are overseas could not be taken off the national database of registrants.

“Anywhere in the world you got to make sure your voters list is regularly updated and that is what’s happening here so always the people who have died and people who moved out the country or whatever, you need to make sure it’s regularly updated and that’s the most important thing,” United Kingdom High Commissioner to Guyana Jane Miller told Demerara Waves Online News.

The opposition A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) had hoped to solicit support from the American, British, Canadian and European Union missions here for a clean voters list. Those Western Nations had jointly criticised the several different declaration of results for Region Four by the Guyana Elections Commission and had joined other actors in the Caribbean and international community for the results of the national vote recount to be used to declare the winner of the March 2020 elections.

APNU+AFC is yet to say whether it will contest the March 13, 2023 local government elections. Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton has hinted at intensified political action or the filing of court proceedings to press its case for a clean voters roll.

The British envoy said the real test is on the day of voting where there is voters list with electors providing authentic identification. “From what I have been told, yes, I am satisfied. I think mechanisms are there,” she said. Asked whether she thought Guyana needed a brand new registration, she said she would be guided by what she has been told but “from what I have heard, I think the list is good enough and I think we just need to make sure that there are those mechanisms in place to make sure it is regularly updated and verified.” Representatives of contesting political parties are provided for at polling stations so that they could cross off the names of voters, and they sign off on the statements of poll after the votes are counted.

High Commissioner Miller said she understood that United States, Canada and the European Union all want to see that the voters list is properly updated and that “there are mechanisms in place on the day of voting to make sure that people are turning up only once and that they have identification that is on that list.”

Ms Miller acknowledged that many persons on the voters list have moved overseas but are still eligible voters who could be weeded out by a fresh house to house registration. “It makes it very complicated so going back doing door-to-door , you would miss out the people that have moved overseas maybe just for a few months, maybe a few weeks, maybe they have gone for a year. They are still eligible voters so that worries me,” she said.

Among the recently tabled amendments to election laws is one that now mandates the General Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages to dispatch the names of deceased persons to GECOM so that they could be struck off the national database of registrants.

The Guyana High Court has ruled that it would be unconstitutional to use residency as a requirement to be on the voters list. The Guyana government has rejected calls by the APNU+AFC  for the constitution and the relevant laws to be amended to allow for house-to-house registration and the use of biometric fingerprint identification at polling stations to prevent multiple voting.

The APNU+AFC has said that the voters list of about 682,000 names is bloated when compared to Guyana’s population of 750,000 persons, and so the list is bloated by an estimated 200,000 names which could lead to voter impersonation.