GECOM dismisses false allegations of house-to-house registration

DPI, Guyana, Monday, April 8, 2019

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has outrightly dismissed the spurious claims made by a frequent letter writer of the Guyana Times Newspaper, who today alleged that the elections body will be using the upcoming house-to-house registration to pad the voters’ list.

Under the caption ‘Not too late to come clean’ Neil Adams claimed that the registration exercise ‘will also be using persons with “fake ID’s” to be placed on the voters’ list

GECOM’s Public Relations Officer (PRO), Yolanda Ward said the average person would know that the letter writer is “not making any sense at all”.

“In order for a person to be registered with the GECOM, they need a source document and the ID [National Identification Card] is not a source document,” Ward told the Department of Public Information (DPI).

She said registrants would need their original certificates, whether it is birth or marriage for women that are married, a deed poll for a person who is adopted, and a certificate of naturalisation for persons who have become citizens through that process.

According to the PRO, Guyana’s laws also provide for persons from Commonwealth countries living in Guyana for more than a year to be registered.

Addressing the allegation of fake ID’s, Ward said this is even more reason for the elections body to carry out the much-needed registration. She said the new registration exercise, which will see an up-to-date Register of registrants.

The political opposition has been vehemently kicking back at the holding of house-to-house registration.

At a press briefing in February, the PRO had said that the National Register of Registrants has a total of 663,365 persons while the Official List of Electors (OLE) has some 633,155 persons. These figures, she said, supports the argument that the OLE is heavily bloated and needs to be sanitised to protect the integrity of any elections.

Alexis Rodney.