GECOM’s Claims & Objections period: “Go now and remove the bloat” – Nandlall tells Opposition parties 

Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall, SC, on Tuesday renewed his call for opposition parties to use the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM)’s latest Claims and Objections period to address any concerns and claims about the Official List of Electors (OLE) being bloated.

Over the years executives and supporters of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR)/A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and newcomers We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) and the Forward Guyana Movement (FGM) have continually alleged that the OLE created by the GECOM is exceedingly bloated, with claims that that list could contain as many as hundreds of thousands of dead and overseas voters.
During the Claims and Objections period, persons can challenge the inclusion of any names on the existing OLE. Nandlall is calling on the opposition to rise to the occasion and capitalise on the opportunity to prove their claims.
“Go now and remove the bloat,” Nandlall underscored during his weekly programme ‘Issues In the News”.
“I am calling on the PNC, I am calling on the APNU, and I’m calling on all those who have the tendency and the proclivity to allege that the registration list and consequently the voters list are bloated to go now and remove the bloat. Go to the registration centres across the country and rinse the list of the bloat. Ganesh Mahipaul and Vincent Alexander, and all of them who argue ad nauseam that the list is bloated. My friend, go with your 10,000 names that should not be on the list. You can take it off.”
Mahipaul is a PNCR executive and APNU member of Parliament, and Alexander is the opposition-appointed GECOM Commissioner. Both have been very vocal in their claims of the need for the OLE to be cleansed.
The National Registration Act provides for two periods during the year where the National Register of Registrants (NRR) is to be stopped for claims and objections to be carried out.
“The claims and objection exercise provides a mechanism that allows for unlawful names and names that should not be on the list to be removed and for persons who should be on the list to lodge a claim to be on the list, and it happens twice per year; it is ongoing now,” Nandlall noted.
It was last week that GECOM announced the commencement of the first claims and objections for 2026. The exercise commenced on Monday, January 5, regarding entries on the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE), which would be used to produce an Official List of Electors.
According to GECOM, during this exercise, any person who has attained the age of 18 years or older by December 31, 2025, and is a Guyanese citizen by birth, descent, naturalisation or registration, or is a citizen from a Commonwealth country living in Guyana for one year or more, can make a claim to entry on the OLE on or before January 18, 2026, provided that he/she is not listed in the PLE.
Meanwhile, objections can be made by an elector who is listed in the same list in which the person being objected to is listed. Objections can also be made by accredited scrutineers of political parties, provided that any such scrutineer has monitoring responsibility for the registration area in which the person being objected to is listed.
The relevant original document(s), such as an original death certificate, must be presented at the time of the hearing of objections to support the basis upon which the objection is made.

“They will not go”
However, Nandlall reasoned that notwithstanding his prompting, he does not believe that the opposition members will submit any objections this go around, any more than they were able to in “Claims and Objection” cycles in the past.
“They will not go, but once the occasion rises next week and it’s an opportunity for them to make ridiculous allegations, they will make it all over again, and here it is: the law is providing an opportunity to remove this bloat,” Nandlall said.
“I hope that the election observers who spoke about this in their report are hearing me. I hope that they hear that I’m calling on the opposition, who told them that the list is bloated by tens of thousands. I am calling upon them to go and cleanse the list now, because the law affords them an opportunity to do so. When I hear about this bloated list of allegations being made, I am going to refer to my statement and my public invitation urging for it to be done. It’s not going to be done, and I know that.”
GECOM’s current claims and objections exercise is one of many that has passed, giving the opposition and other members of the public the opportunity to raise objections to the inclusion of any unqualified voter on the list.