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Aug 04, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
The government has denied charges that false or fake birth certificates are being issued to persons. This allegation should be put to rest through a process of independent review, because it has the possibility of creating political instability in post-election 2020 period.
The allegation is not a new one. It surfaced in the wake of the May 2015 elections and was used as one of the possible explanations for the massive increase, in absolute terms, in voter turnout in Region 4, primarily for the APNU+AFC coalition. The allegation there was made in a political context. It therefore could have been politically contrived. Or it simply could have been the response to suspicion about the poll numbers.
What was being alleged was that there was the possibility that underage persons were registered in the run-up to the 2015 elections and this was responsible for swelling of the voters’ list.
This allegation, so far, is without substance, but its potential for creating instability should not be underestimated. Guyana needs to settle the outcome of its elections.
The long delay in announcing the results of a couple hundreds of thousands of votes is fertile ground for the electoral suspicion, and once there is suspicion it is very easy for troublemakers to trey to spew mistrust by concocting allegations of impropriety.
Guyanese are familiar with these attempts in the past. In the 1997 elections, talk show hosts biased towards the PNCR, took the waves to spew their poison. First there was the suggestion that GECOM computers were linked to the PPP headquarters. There were hundreds of ignoramuses believing this mischief, even though it was clear that the results were also being tabulated manually. It ended up being the manual tabulation in 1992 which had saved Guyana from being destroyed by rioters.
Another piece of mischief was that ballot boxes were stolen and taken into a house in Albouystown. In fact, a poor, innocent man, a newspaper vendor, whose only crime was that he sold newspapers including the Mirror newspaper which is affiliated with the PPP, was kidnapped and taken to Congress Place where he was reportedly interrogated by the PNCR’s leader Desmond Hoyte.
Elections in Guyana are breeding grounds for political suspicion. The political mischief was concocted by known ringleaders, two of whom who were media personalities who have gone to the Great Beyond. But there are elements of mischief makers who are still around and who can be summoned into action at the click of a finger.
The outcome of the 2015 general and regional elections was a shocker. The PPP did not expect to lose. The APNU+AFC coalition hoped to win, but did not really and truly expect to win. They did win in the end, but the results were so close that this in itself created further suspicion that there was manipulation of the count. There also surfaced the allegation that the voters’ roll could have been padded with underage persons.
But this could only have happened if the persons who were registered had fake birth certificates. This is how the allegation about fake birth certificates arose.
The mistrust between the political parties have led to suspicions that the PNCR, a party with a dirty electoral past, was planning to interfere with the electoral roll for the 2020 elections by registering under-aged persons. No evidence to prove that this did happen or is happening.
But the authorities and the international community must not underestimate the potential of this suspicion to create political instability or to be used as an excuse by the defeated party or parties in the 2020 polls. There is a simple way to resolve this matter. A random sampling of the Region 4 voters roll should be taken. This sample should then be tested to see if there any under-aged persons were registered for the 2015 polls.
This exercise should be carried out by an independent body, preferably from overseas and should be allowed to access the primary records of registries of births and deaths.
This allegation should be put to rest. It is in the interest of both political parties to put these allegations behind them because once they remain alive, it will lead to the constant questioning of election results.
The government has been appointing a lot of Commissions of Inquiries, each of which costs millions of dollars. An exercise such as the one suggested will not be as costly, financially, as any of the COIs, but will save Guyana a lot of anxiety and heartaches come 2020.
Guyana needs to put behind it, its record of controversial electoral outcomes. This can be easily done through an independent review of the 2015 voters roll, using recognized statistical tools.
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