Proposed amendments to see periodic removal of dead persons from voters’ list – Guyana Chronicle

ATTORNEY-GENERAL (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, SC said the proposed amendments and electoral reforms will see the removal of dead persons from the voters’ list taking place periodically.

Nandlall made these remarks during his live-streamed Facebook show, “Issues in the News,” where he said that the government has always said that names can and must only be removed from the electors’ list in accordance with the law.

At the time, the AG responded to and rejected the contention made by the main opposition, APNU+AFC that the ruling PPP/C administration is objecting to the removal of deceased persons from the list.

“Let me reject that contention unreservedly, the PPP has always said that the persons who are on that list must be removed based upon provisions in the law that relate to removal of persons from the list,” he said.

This, he said, means that persons must be removed from the list based upon the legal grounds for removing them. Death, he added, is one of the legal grounds to remove persons from the list.

As such, he reiterated that they have never said that they want dead people on the list and added that they are however asking the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to remove those persons from the list.

However, the Attorney-General revealed that the amendment that the government is proposing in the electoral reforms is to make it mandatory for dead persons to be removed from the list at periodic intervals.

These proposed amendments, he added, specify the periodic intervals.

“…. within the time specified in the amendments, there must be a collaboration between the General Registrar’s office, that is the person who keeps all the death records. There must be collaboration between that office and GECOM for the purpose of comparing records,” he added.

This collaboration must happen so that the voters’ list and the National Registration database can be adjusted to reflect the removal of dead people from that database and from all electoral lists.

This, he said, is what the government is working to implement, while adding that he has been speaking on the issue of names being removed in accordance with the law for quite some time.

In late August, GECOM, while taking note of the public opinions that were expressed about the Preliminary List of Electors and the removal of names from the same, said the Commission cannot act contrary to the legal provisions in the National Registration Act (NRA).

Earlier this year, Vice-President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo said the government wants the law to be very explicit in stating that the Chief Elections Officer must secure from the General Registration Office a list of all dead persons to then remove those persons from the voters’ list.

The Vice-President was at the time speaking at a press conference on the consultations for the draft Representation of the People Act (RoPA).

He said GECOM has the right now to remove people from the list based on a death certificate, and as such, this process must be made transparent so that GECOM can do so on a larger scale.

“We want to put that into law, so every time they remove dead people, they must share this with all the parties in Guyana and publish it in the newspapers, not just do it in GECOM on their own,” Dr Jagdeo noted