Less than two hours after acting Chief Justice, Roxane George delivered her decisions in the challenges to the ongoing House-to-House Registration exercise, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo said that his party feels vindicated for advising their supporters and Guyanese at large not to take part in the exercise.
Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo
Chief Justice George on Wednesday ruled that while the H2H Registration process is not unconstitutional and refused to set a definitive date for General and Regional Elections as mandated by the Constitution following the passage of the December 21, 2018, motion of no confidence, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) cannot remove the names of persons who are already on the National Register of Registrants (NRR). In light of that significant pronouncement, Jagdeo said that it is exactly what they fought for.
“So we are vindicated in telling people not to register. Your names cannot be removed from the register whether they have participated in the enumeration exercise or not, whether they live abroad, or they have gone in the interior and not at home. Nobody, not even GECOM, can now remove your name from that database and so this is key for us,” he said.
“That is what we were fighting [for] all along because we felt that they were going to deregister thousands of people. Removing their names simply because they couldn’t find them at home or that they have gone abroad on vacation or something of that sort. So now that’s the key thing,” Jagdeo added.
Jagdeo made the statements at a press briefing following Wednesday’s ruling.
This decision not to remove names from the present NRR and Official List of Electors (OLE) undercuts the major argument of the Government that they are “bloated” by some 200,000 names, which the H2H programme was supposed to winnow out. It is very certain that the new list will be even larger than the old one and will need the Claims and Objections period the Opposition had recommended in the first place to clean it up.
The former President said the ruling is a major step forward and that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) hopes that GECOM will now respect the CJ’s ruling and move swiftly in the direction of the Claims and Objections period so that the Official List of Electors (OLE) can be updated.
Complete waste of time and money
The H2H Registration order was published in the Official Gazette on June 11 and came into effect on July 20 some two days after the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) ruled that then Chairman, Justice James Patterson was unilaterally appointed using a flawed process.
However, GECOM under the guidance of Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield went ahead with the H2H process in order to extract a new OLE. The Government supported the move by claiming that young persons are disenfranchised and that the list is bloated by over 200,000 names, a claim GECOM rebuked.
CJ George on Wednesday ruled that Guyanese previously registered and residing overseas could not be removed from the database unless they are dead or becomes disqualified based on Article 159 of the Constitution.
In light of that, Jagdeo said that the entire H2H exercise has been a waste of time and money.
“The entire House-to-House exercise as done so far has been a complete waste of time and money because they cannot remove people from the NRR who have already registered…. So that means that the NRR what we have used to extract the OLE for all elections before remains intact and when the enumerators come around now whether you’re home or not, whether you registered or not, once your name is on the NRR and you voted in the last elections then they cannot remove your name. Your name will be on the updated NRR and the OLE extracted from that NRR,” he noted.
The Opposition Leader said that they are not re-litigating the issue of having the courts set a definitive date for elections. He pointed to Article 106 of the Constitution which mandates elections three months after the successful passage of a NCM. He said that the PPP/C was being lenient in accepting September 18, 2019, as the date for the end of the three-month period but since the Government refuses to acknowledge that, they are now forced to revert to the March 21, 2019, date.
“The Government has been unconstitutional and a usurper since March 21 and that makes everything they have done from that period null and void. Now we have a longer period to look back at their actions…the CCJ said that the Constitution does not need glossing over. President Granger needs to honour our Constitution with integrity…we only have to deal with him because we need somebody who has constitutional authority to move things forward based on Article 106 (7),” Jagdeo said.
There is the possibility to determining GECOM’s next plan of action when newly appointed Chair, Justice Claudette Singh, meets with all the Commissioners for the first time today.
