The National Assembly on Monday amended the Representation of the People’s Act (ROPA) ahead of the 2025 General and Regional Elections.
The Representation of the People’s Act was amended in 2022 to split the major administrative Regions Three and Six into three sub-districts and Region Four into four sub-districts manned by Supernumerary Returning Officers. This process will facilitate the tabulation of votes at the various sub-districts as opposed to one central location in each region, in the presence of all political party agents and others.
On Monday, the Act was further amended to include Deputy Supernumerary Returning Officer to ensure another person is available to conduct duties in the absence of the Supernumerary Returning Officer.
Attorney General Anil Nandlall, in whose name the bill was tabled, explained that “that famous exercise that we all saw on March 3-4th at Ashmin’s Building at the corner of Hadfield Street and Avenue of the Republic, Georgetown…will now take place in Region Four at four different centres. That obviously is now being done to avoid that fraudulent fiasco which erupted at the Ashmin’s building and to avoid the electoral miscreants from unfolding their plans which every elections has seen them trying to unfold.”
He was at the time referring to attempts by Returning Officer for District Four, Clairmont Mingo to derail the results of the count for Region Four in March 2020 to falsely declare the then incumbent APNU+AFC as the winner. These attempts which included reading results from a fraudulent spreadsheet, were carried out at the Ashmin’s building which used as the command centre for GECOM for the region.
Mingo who is before the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court along with others in relation to attempts to derail the 2020 elections, also fell ill on March 4, leading to the process being stalled.
“Bandits will always have a problem if you grill your house, it makes their job a little more tedious and difficult so you will excuse the utterances you are hearing emanating from the other side,” Nandlall heckled during his presentation on Monday.
Region Four will this year be divided into sub-districts as follows; East Coast Demerara, East Bank Demerara, North Georgetown and South Georgetown.
Nandlall noted that since the PPP/C government assumed office in August 2020, five months after the polls, it has amended the Representation of the Peoples Act to avoid another electoral impasse.
Similar sentiments were expressed by Minister of Local Government and Regional Development Sonia Parag who noted that “no longer should we have to be sitting in a country waiting on the results of an elections for five months for the results of our elections.”
“We cannot rewrite the past or erase the deep scars etched into our national consciousness by repeated efforts to undermine the democratic process…but what we can do and must do is legislate for a future where the rules are clear, the systems are strong and the avenues for interference are firmly closed,” the Minister said.
She added that with the split of the electoral districts into smaller sub-districts, “these (supernumerary) officers play a critical role throughout the electoral process and their functions are tightly regulated. Moreover, their functions ensures that no single officer or location becomes a bottleneck in the declaration of results which we would all agree can be a source of uneasiness for our country.”
Other contributors to the debate from include Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha, and Opposition Members of Parliament Roysdale Forde, Sherod Duncan, Tabitha Sarabo-Halley and Amanza Walton Desir.
The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) recently posted revised manuals for General and Regional Elections titled (i) Official Manual for Returning Officers, Supernumerary Returning Officers and Other Election Officials, and (ii) Official Manual for Presiding Officers and Other Polling Day Officials. The manuals will be used for the training of Management Staff for the upcoming elections.
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