No decision taken on elections date

Feb 06, 2019 News

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is yet to decide on a date for the holding of the Regional and General Elections, Chief Elections Officer, (CEO) of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Keith Lowenfield told the media yesterday.
He was addressing the media after several hours of meeting with the Operations Sub-Committee at the Commission’s secretariat, yesterday.
Lowenfield clarified that the life of the current list of electors will expire on the last day of April this year. According to Lowenfield, if elections are not held before that date, the secretariat will have to proceed with the production of a new official list of electors.
Based on the discussion put forward, Lowenfield stressed that it is likely that the elections date will be extended beyond the 90-day period, which is set to expire on Mar

(CEO) of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Keith Lowenfield

ch 19.
He reiterated that General and Regional Elections are not likely sooner than July. But the election body may have to carry out a Claims and Objections exercise to “clean the list of electors.”

“Lists have a life date. A list is never clean; every electoral list has someone who is deceased, so it is really saying to you what is cleanliness? Is it where all the listed persons there are alive and well? If one person there is deceased, then the cleanliness [of the list] comes into question.”

According to the CEO, one of the mandates of GECOM is to always be in a state of readiness for elections and registration. Each of these activities, however, must be carried out, at the order of the commission itself.
He said the production of any new list will have to be guided by the commission and that process can be carried out through a Claims and Objection period.
Lowenfield said, “A lot of factors are up for consideration; for instance house-to-house registration. Are we going have 400 additional sub-offices or are we going to have 200 locations for house-to-house registration?”
“The Commission will also have to decide whether we will be in the fields for four months. And if we are in the field for four months, we must do training to ensure we have a competent staff to execute.”
According to Lowenfield, based on the timelines being put forward by GECOM’s Secretariat, it will be unlikely for elections to be held before July 2019.