Jagdeo hopes new GECOM Chair will stop house to house registration
-Threatens contempt of court proceedings against CEO
Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo says he will push for the new Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to stop the house to house registration as the PPP considers its legal options.
Jagdeo at a massive protest on Friday said, “we will ensure that when the new Chairperson is in place and we hope that we have a chairperson that will respect the ruling of the court, that this activity could easily morph back into Claims and Objections.”
The Opposition Leader and President David Granger are currently engaged in an informal process to select the new Chair of GECOM.
The President has since found four persons who are not unacceptable to be included in the final list of six to be submitted to him.
The Opposition Leader has submitted four additional names to be considered by two teams representing the leaders. The additional names were submitted on Wednesday and there have not been any meetings of the smaller teams since.
Meanwhile, Jagdeo threatened to file contempt of court proceedings against the Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield for moving ahead with the registration process.
But Jagdeo noted that the PPP will not encourage its supporters to boycott the house to house registration.
“As a serious party, we will observe on the ground, field scrutineers for every activity. We are not going to be caught flat-footed. Our purpose is winning the elections whenever they are called and the PPP is ready for that. We have to follow the process until it stops,” Jagdeo said.
In a full-page advertisement in the local newspapers on Friday, Chartered Accountant and attorney Christopher Ram said he is boycotting GECOM’s planned house-to-house registration and he called on Guyanese to do likewise.
Ram was the person who filed an application with the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to reverse or set aside the Guyana Appeal Court ruling that the No-Confidence motion was invalidly passed. The court ruled in his favour on June 18.
The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) in a press statement on Friday confirmed that it will commence house to house registration on Saturday, a process which it hopes to complete by October 20th.
GECOM said the decision to hold the registration exercise is also in keeping with a decision of the Commission on 19th February 2019.
Upon the conclusion of this exercise, a new National Register of Registrants Database will be created.
Subsequently, the Official List of Electors (OLE) will be extracted for the purpose of conducting General and Regional Elections.
