…with the RLE changes
One of the presumed virtues of having a former Judge Chairing GECOM is the presumption they’re au fait with the English language in which the electoral rules are couched. Plus, having been exposed to the rules of statutory interpretation, they could guide the institution in executing its duties. So, once again, your Eyewitness has to wonder about “Iron Lady” Claudette Singh.
As Goldfinger had famously pointed out in “Casino Royale”: “Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence…but the third time is enemy action”! And it is now at least three times that Singh has thrown a spanner into the electoral works, so what else can we conclude?? And this third spanner is a doozy…especially when GECOM quoted a Regulation to justify its action – to order 91,000 changes to the Revised List of Electors (RLE) – which clearly does no such thing!!
The cited Regulation 37 states: “If within the period of 21 days after he had certified lists, the Commissioner is satisfied that any entry or omission in any list as revised pursuant to Regulation 35 is incorrect THROUGH INADVERTENCE IN THE COURSE OF SUCH REVISION, he shall make or cause to be made the requisite correction to that list and such copy thereof as is open for inspection at any registration office and the Commissioner shall give to the person to whom such correction relates notice thereof, which may be sent by registered post to his last known address.”
Now, we need to consider what went into the creation of this RLE. There was the original National Register of Registrants (NRR) from which was extracted the Preliminary List of Registrants (PLE) of everyone over 18. This was subjected to a Claims and Objections (C&O) process to add and delete names as were brought to GECOM’s attention. Then, of course, there was the action of the Chair to truncate the H2H registration; code the 270,000 unverified names collected; electronically match them to the post-C&O list; send 20,000 “unmatched” names – culled from an original 67,000 – into the field to be “verified” – and ONLY THEN produce the RLE!!
And now we’re told that through INADVERTENCE, 91,000 changes have to be made!! “Inadvertence”, the dictionary says, means the fact or action of being inadvertent; a result of inattention; an oversight; a slip. So after all that massaging and checking by the GECOM Secretariat, expensive foreign IT firms, the local political parties in the field, 91,000 entries were not made because of an “OVERSIGHT”??! Credulity is stretched beyond snapping point?
If something was “rotten in the state of Denmark”, then, Dear Reader, something stinks to high heavens in Guyana that’s beyond rotten!!
It has to be enemy action!!
…in some schools
When your Eyewitness saw that video clip of that schoolgirl being stabbed in the back (literally and most gruesomely) by one of her schoolmates, his “insides turned” at the fateful moment – even though he’d been forewarned as to what was coming. But we shouldn’t be surprised at this final denouement on violence in schools (hopefully), should we?? Like a Greek tragedy of yore, the signs had been building up into this tragedy.
But the question is what’s causing this escalation and secondly, what’s the authorities doing about the phenomenon? While your Eyewitness is sure there’s no one single cause for the phenomenon, we have to consider the normalisation of violence in our society to settle differences as one of the contributing factors. Just look at the astronomic rates of domestic violence…much of these are intra-family and kids are exposed to and subjected to this violence in the home.
Then, imagine the Minister of Education saying blithely after one incident: “kids does fight in school”!!
Of course, they do. So we encourage it?
…with Granger’s constitutional nous
So Granger’s appointment of Winston Felix and Keith Scott as “technocratic” Ministers was confirmed as illegal by the Appellate Court.
Is he going to insist it’s their “perception” and he’s entitled to his??!
