Jagdeo remains suspicious of GECOM’s changes to Revised Voters’ List

At a press conference this afternoon, Mr. Jagdeo said the moves by GECOM to make corrections to the Revised Voters List appears suspicious.

Jagdeo remains suspicious of GECOM’s changes to Revised Voters’ List

Leader of the Opposition and PPP General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo today said he is still not satisfied with the work of the Guyana Elections Commission ahead of the upcoming elections in March.

At a press conference this afternoon, Mr. Jagdeo said the moves by GECOM to make corrections to the Revised Voters List appears suspicious.

“We in the People Progressive Party and I want to urge APNU to do the same… they should get the changes and do some fieldwork on their own but it’s not our responsibility neither is it APNU responsibility or that of the PPP to ensure that it is a list that has integrity. It is GECOM’s responsibility and we will do our work and I want to urge APNU to do its work too to check the voters’ list because we don’t want errors for anybody even in their strongholds” Jagdeo stated.

Mr. Jagdeo was at the time reacting to the fact that the Elections Commission has indicated that it will forge ahead with making changes to the addresses of over 90,000 persons who were registered during the house to house process.

“What we thought was settled, now a resurgence of surreptitious activities that should have never taken place…. That when the Revised Voters’ List was produced which included the PLE (Preliminary list of electors), the 6000 odd names from the Claims and Objections plus the 16,000 new registrants that they claim had done house to house registration, that they should be no change thereafter because of statutory compliance… Now we are hearing internally that 91,000 changes will be made to the voter’s list where addresses will be changed,” Jagdeo complained.

He said the number of changes that have to be made has raised the eyebrows of many and he wants the Revised Voters List closely scrutinized.

“This must be a cause of concern for the whole country but particularly the Chair to allow the staff to make 91,000 changes to the Revised Voters’ List in addresses when they made so many errors, even with the inputting of the data for the cross-referring fingerprinting exercise, the margin of error was over 100% and a minor error here can result in a disenfranchising of voters”.

The Elections Commission in a statement this afternoon said its move to make the changes is covered in law.

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