…post-elections protests
The Opposition’s kept up a steady drumbeat of complaints about the “bloated voters’ list” that’s gonna be used for the 2025 elections. But they know fully well any “bloating” is from the hot air they produce by their kvetching – which is simply to lay the ground for protests – with the usual accompanying violence after losing those elections. In warfare – of which their politics is merely a continuation – this move is known as a preemptive strike!!
The procedure to produce an “Official List of Electors” (OLE) here was painstakingly worked out after the PNC used every trick in the book – and then some – to rig elections between 1968 and 1985. Basically it’s extracted from a National Register of Registrants Database (NRRD) – which was initiated in 1967 by the PNC – and maintained by the General Registry Office (GRO). It contains a list of all Guyanese 14 and over who’d been registered since the last House-to-House (HtH) Registration in 2008.
According to the law, the NRRD’s been updated ever since by having youths register when they become 14 in a process of “continuous registration”. So, there’s no reason for “house-to-house” registration before every election. The alleged “bloating” isn’t some nefarious plot by the PPP, but arises from those thousands who emigrate to “foreign”. Their names remain on the register – since they can be removed by the GRO only after they receive death certificates. Barbados’ voters’ list is just as “bloated” – for the same reason – and no one complains!! The other objection is that there are “dead” persons’ names on the OLE – and individuals can vote for them with their IDs. Which challenge was to be handled by party agents at voting centres!!
Usually, when elections are in the offing – Local or National – a “Preliminary List of Electors” (PLE) is extracted of everyone who’s 18 or older and GECOM then engages in a “Claims and Objections” (C&O) process. Here everyone who can prove they should be on the list makes a “claim” and those who detect dead persons can make an “objection”. There was a C&O done in January and another done in July – even though election’s a year away – presumably to allay the Opposition’s hysteria!! In the C&O, there are usually about 5000 claims for including but less than 20 objections.
The PNC in Opposition had insisted the “bloating” had to be fixed before they participated in elections – ‘cause it helps PPP rigging. Yet the latter LOST the 2015 elections!! The PNC attempted a HtH exercise in 2019 to “debloat” the list, but the Court ruled it was unconstitutional to remove overseas citizens’ names – just because they weren’t resident in Guyana!!
Your Eyewitness wonders why the Opposition don’t ask to constitutionally de-enfranchise overseas Guyanese??
…the electorate
One popular strategy used in politics was interestingly coined (yes “coined!) by PT Barnum, the circus shill!! He said promise folks everything and they’ll believe it ‘cause “a sucker’s born every minute”!! So in Guyana, in addition to as the WPA’s “Declaration of Buxton” – studiously echoing Burnham’s “Declaration of Sophia” – which called for the Government to hand over US$5000 EVERY year to EVERY Guyanese family, we now have the PNC’s Aubrey Norton promising that if they get into Government, they’ll be building a new fertiliser plant to utilise associated gas from the oil producers and to distribute that FREE to farmers!! Now if that wasn’t designed to bring voters into the WPA and PNC camps, what is??
Problem is, there’s around 224,000 families in Guyana so to fulfil that promise would take over US$1.1 billion annually for immediate consumption and delay our strategic, long-term infrastructural development !! Now we hope that Guyanese are not as dumb to believe the PNC can “suck cane and blow whistle at the same time”!!
…new servant mentality?
There’s a big push on tourism here. Your Eyewitness feels tourism’s OK for “developed” countries where tourists gawk. In the Third World, they come to examine us as exotic specimens. And we’re trained to perform as such!!
Masquerades and limbo??
