Early line-up outside Umana Yana: Opposition parties’ fear of duplicate backers driving desperation – VP

General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Bharrat Jagdeo suspects that many of the opposition political parties have the same backers on their respective candidate lists, which they have to submit to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) on Nomination Day on Monday, in order to qualify to contest the upcoming elections.
Any party’s list with duplicate signatures is deemed defective, and if the political organisation is unable to rectify the issue, they will not be able to contest the September 1 General and Regional Elections.

Jagdeo said this could be why the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), Alliance For Change (AFC) and other smaller political parties are camping outside of the Umana Yana in Georgetown – days before the Nomination Day activities are scheduled to take place.
“Their fear, the reason APNU started so early, is that the same people might be signing the backers list for AFC, APNU and Amanza [Walton-Desir]’s party and…Simona Broomes’ party,” the PPP General Secretary said.
His comments came recognising that several persons have crossed from the AFC to the APNU, while Walton-Desir of the Forward Guyana political party and Broomes of the Assembly For Liberty and Prosperity (ALP) were a part of the APNU.
While the parties may share supporters, individuals are only permitted to back one political party as candidates on their lists which are submitted to GECOM.
The lists include a Geographical Constituency List, a National Top-Up List and a Regional Democratic Council List.
Each party is required to submit their lists of candidates for the election of a president, members of the National Assembly and members of the Regional Democratic Councils to the Chief Elections Officer.
The law prescribed that the submissions of the lists of candidates and nominators will have to be done strictly on Nomination Day and within the timeframe set – no time earlier or later.

Consequently, these lists will be presented to the Chief Elections Officer, Vishnu Persaud, on Monday from 10:00 to 14:00 at the Umana Yana in Kingston, Georgetown.

No fear for PPP
Jagdeo said that his party members, including Housing and Water Minister Susan Rodrigues and Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister Kwame McCoy, recently visited the location after observing the other parties camping out.
However, after contacting GECOM, it was clarified that the Commission has not yet commenced registering parties.
“GECOM said they did not take over the site as yet, so right now they are just lining up in front of [a building managed by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport]. GECOM has not taken over the site as yet,” the General Secretary said.
Meanwhile, he said the PPP does not share the same fear as the other political parties since “we have backers like crazy…and we don’t have to worry about that duplication that can make our list deficient.” In fact, he said his party is still working to reduce the signatories on its list to the final count.
Each party’ National Top-Up List should comprise 300-330 nominators and 42 candidates (persons to be elected to sit in the National Assembly), who all need a signed statutory declaration form in the presence of a Commissioner of Oaths or Justice of Peace, and include the name of the presidential candidate.
The Statutory Declaration form is what candidates sign to indicate that they are Guyanese and conform to other requirements set out in the law, such as that they are not a citizen of any other country.

Requirements
Meanwhile, the Geographical Constituency (Administrative Regions) List must include 150-175 nominators from each constituency.
With regards to the regional elections, the Regional Democratic Council List must comprise 150-175 nominators for each constituency – all residing in the said region – and 12 to 36 candidates also from within the region. They too are required to sign a statutory form.
Candidates and nominators can only appear on one party’s list, including on both the National Top-up and Geographical Constituency Lists, but can only appear on one of that party’s geographical lists.
With Guyana’s National Assembly comprised of 65 elected members, 25 of these are elected from the 10 geographical constituencies and the remaining 40 from the national top-up list. Parties also have to ensure that one-third of the candidates nominated are female.
A breakdown of the 10 geographical constituencies shows that Regions One, Two, Five, Seven and 10 are allocated two seats each; Regions Three and Six get three seats each; Region Four is allocated seven seats; and Regions Eight and Nine get one seat each.
Political parties can contest a minimum of six of the 10 geographical constituencies, but when combined, those constituencies must amount to a total of 13 seats.
These requirements, as well as others, will be examined by the Chief Elections Officer, and those parties ’whose lists do not meet all the requirements will be deemed defective. However, the CEO will inform of the defective list(s), and the respective parties will have one day to make corrections and resubmit the lists.
GECOM has software that it has been using since 2006, which has been fine-tuned over the years, to run the lists from each political party to identify defects such as repetition of names where they ought not to be.
For those lists with defects, the respective party will be informed by GECOM on July 15, and they will have until July 17 to make the corrections. GECOM will give final approval or disapproval of the lists on July 18. Thereafter, provisions are made for any party to take legal action to contest GECOM’s decision.
During this time also, parties can make withdrawals or notifications of the death of candidates to GECOM by July 15; submit withdrawals of lists by July 17; and submit notifications of the Joinder of Lists by July 21.
GECOM will then be publishing the final and approved lists, titles and symbols on July 23 after a rigorous vetting process to ensure that all the submissions are in compliance with the various legal practices and procedures.
Although GECOM has approved the list of 21 political parties, several of the smaller parties have since formed alliances with either other small parties or with much larger political parties. These changes will be reflected when GECOM publishes the final list on July 23.