…says it is not engaged in any field exercise
The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has sounded alarm bells over unidentified persons pretending to be employees of the agency, who are visiting homes in Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) collecting registration data of persons.
On Monday, GECOM revealed that it has received reports of persons claiming to be part of a “Future Forward Foundation” going door to door in Wismar, Linden under the pretext of being GECOM employees. This, according to the agency, is not a process that it is conducting.
“It is imperative that we make it abundantly clear that GECOM is not currently engaged in any such exercise, nor has the commission engaged or authorised any person or group or organisation to collect information from any person for any reason whatsoever through house-to-house visits or any other methodology,” GECOM explained on Monday.
According to GECOM, the only time its registration staff would visit the homes of applicants is during registration exercises. During these visits, GECOM staff and party scrutineers would identify themselves and display accreditation badges showing clearly that they belong to GECOM.
“GECOM takes this opportunity to state categorically that, as an integral component of the ongoing registration exercise, GECOM Registration Staff and accredited Scrutineers of the Parliamentary Political Parties are required to visit the given residential addresses of applicants for registration only to verify the existence and accuracy of addresses they would have provided.”
“However, those applicants are routinely advised about that legal requirement at the time of the application being prepared. GECOM Staff and Scrutineers are required to display their respective identification and accreditation badges throughout all such field exercises. Accordingly, the general public is hereby cautioned not to recognise any person(s) without GECOM identification as being representatives of this Commission.”
In light of this, GECOM urged citizens to be “extremely cautious” and refrain from giving any information to persons purporting to be GECOM representatives.
Further, GECOM urged persons to contact them on telephone numbers 223-9653, 225-5808, or 225-5868 to report or clarify any concerns.
In 2022, GECOM had also had cause to raise the alarm over unauthorised persons visiting the homes of citizens. At the time, GECOM had urged representatives of political parties visiting homes not to misrepresent themselves as belonging to GECOM.
It has previously been indicated that the 2025 General and Regional elections will be held late next year, potentially November 2025. With the 2025 General and Regional Elections just a year away, political parties have already been gearing up to campaign.
In February 2024, the Government had written the European Union (EU) to field an Election Observer Mission (EOM) to monitor the local polls. Governments are customarily required to write international bodies to invite them to observe national elections.
During a press conference at the time, General Secretary of the ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, said Government wants to have a wide presence of the international community here.
The international community, including the EU, had played a crucial role in ensuring that democracy prevailed following the historic March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections, which saw Guyana being in a political deadlock for five months as a result of blatant attempts to steal the elections by some officials of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) with the aim of keeping the then A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance for Change (APNU/AFC) regime in power.
At the 2020 polls, the PPP/C won the presidency with a commanding 233,336 votes, a lead of 15,416 over its nearest political rival, the APNU/AFC coalition.
