The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has completed encoding the data collected from over 370,000 persons during the house-to-house registration exercise and will be putting it up for public scrutiny from Thursday, according to GECOM Commissioner, Charles Corbin.
“All the data has been encoded and the publication of the data –the result of that will be published with effect from Thursday in the various areas,” he told reporters shortly after the Commission’s weekly statutory meeting on Tuesday.
The Claims and Objections period began on October 01 and will conclude on November 11.
However, Opposition nominated Commissioner Sase Gunraj said the Commission did not decide how the Commission will incorporate the information to formulate the preliminary list of electors.
“The proposal is to publicise it for public scrutiny but then to what end?” Gunraj question.
The Opposition has been against the house-to-house registration exercise and later disagreed with the use of data in the preparation of a preliminary list of electors.
The Commission was slated to vote on a proposal to remove the names of over 20,000 persons from the voters’ list for failure to collect their Identification Cards but this did not take place Tuesday as one commissioner, Vincent Alexander was absent from the statutory meeting.
GECOM is looking to remove the names of persons who have not collected their Identification Cards dating back to 2008.
From all indications, it seems that GECOM Chairman Justice retired Claudette Singh will have to cast the deciding vote since the three Government nominated Commissioners support the proposal and the three Opposition nominated Commissioners are against it.
Meanwhile, the Commission met with representatives of the European Union (EU) as the diplomatic body wants to send an electoral observer mission to Guyana. “They engaged the Commission on the scope of their operations, the method of operation and the Commission on its part welcomed its involvement and indicate that we will support their involvement,” Corbin said.
He noted that other international bodies and the United States and Canada have also been engaged on working with GECOM to ensure free and fair elections come March 2020.
Former elections chief of Canada, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, is already in place at the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to share his advice on best practices in operational matters.
