APNU/AFC now wants all overseas-based Guyanese off voters’ list – AG

…“No, Mr Norton” – Nandlall to Opposition Leader

Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall, SC, has said that the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Opposition wants to disenfranchise overseas-based Guyanese by removing their constitutional right to vote and be registered in Guyana.

Citing data from the United States Homeland Security, Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton disclosed on Tuesday that within a five-year period some 54,000 Guyanese have received permanent visas to the US alone while more than 200,000 Guyanese were issued a visitor’s visa – and 25 per cent of them overstayed.
Against this backdrop, Norton said that the APNU/AFC coalition was now willing to work with the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government to amend the constitution and have these persons removed from the country’s voters’ list.
“We are prepared to work with the Government to amend the legislation to ensure that we can clean a voters list,” the Opposition Leader stated.
But AG Nandlall argued that this move would disenfranchise Guyanese living overseas, including many of the Opposition’s supporters.
“This political party that you support, they want to disqualify you from ever being registered in Guyana and from voting in Guyana – that is what they want to do and they’re prepared to partner with the PPP. So much they want to disenfranchise you and deny you of your right to vote in Guyana, that they are prepared to partner with this big, bad, dictatorial PPP to achieve that objective… the same party that they are telling you to attack,” the Attorney General contended.

According to Nandlall, the coalition Opposition has failed to understand that migrants, even though they no longer live in Guyana, are still lawfully on the voters’ list and as such, could not be considered a bloat.
Moreover, the AG noted that the APNU/AFC failed to implement any constitutional reform, which was one of its manifesto promises during its tenure in office and now it wanted to unilaterally do it while in Opposition.
“They promised [constitutional reform] in 2015 with the full participation of the people. If they wanted to change and clean the voters’ list all the time and amend the Constitution, which they promised they will do within three months of 2015 getting into Government, why they didn’t do it? But importantly, they promise that when they do it, it will involve the full participation of the people and here it is, Aubrey Norton – the leader of that party – is saying to the people of Guyana, he’s going to abandon that promise. He’s not going to the people anymore, he going now to the PPP to strike a deal,” the AG stressed.
However, he pointed out that the PPP/C Administration was committed to involving the people of this country in its constitutional reform process, which has already started.

“No, Mr Norton”
“We are saying no, Mr Norton. We have promised constitutional reform and we have said to people of Guyana that we are coming to you and asking your views on how we should reform the Constitution. We are not Aubrey Norton for political and narrow purposes…
“So, we are not going to [engage] in no secret deal with Norton to change the Constitution. We are committed to a constitutional reform process, and we have laid and passed a bill [on Monday] in the National Assembly, outlining how that constitutional process will take place,” Nandlall asserted.
He noted that if during that process, it was consensually agreed by the people that the requirements to be registered and vote in Guyana need to be changed, then such amendments would be dealt with.
Ironically, however, this new stance by the Opposition Leader to collaborate with the PPP/C Government, which the Opposition has persistently refused to accept as legitimate comes on the heels of the APNU/AFC Members of Parliament (MPs) storming out of the National Assembly on Monday as the Attorney General was preparing to start the debate on the Constitution Reform Commission Bill 2022.
Presented to the House in August of this year, the Bill provides for the establishment of a 20-member Constitutional Reform Commission to review the country’s supreme laws.
According to the provisions of the Bill, the Commission will review the Constitution to provide for the current and future rights, duties, liabilities, and obligations of the Guyanese people. It is mandated for that purpose to receive, consider and evaluate submissions for the alteration of the Constitution, and report its recommendations to the standing committee for transmission to the National Assembly.
In conducting the review, the Commission will also consider the full protection of the fundamental rights and freedom of Guyanese under law, the rights of Indigenous people of Guyana, the rights of children, eliminating discrimination in all forms, and improving ethnic relations while promoting ethnic security and equal opportunity.
Any amendments to the Constitution of Guyana require a two-thirds majority support in the National Assembly or support via a national referendum. (G8)