June 04 - Government Replies To Opposition On Register Of Electors Issue
The Government have issued the following statement:
Opposition Hypocrisy Palpable in Register Call
- Register cannot be opened in short time available;
- Opposition have left it until they decided to contest election to raise the point
- GSD call comes only after one of their most ardent supporters notices he is not registered
The Opposition's call for the Register of Electors to be re-opened is quite surprising because it has unfortunately come rather late in the day.
It would have been helpful if these concerns had been expressed sooner to the Government, either privately or publicly, in or out of Parliament, given that it has been known that a by-election was coming for about six weeks.
The advice to the Government is that the administrative requirements of either re-opening the Register, or issuing a supplement to it before the by-election takes place, cannot reasonably be carried out in the short time available.
This is compounded by the use of Parliament for the Budget debate which is currently expected to take place this month, only days before the by-election itself.
It is important to note that the existing Register already contains the names of those people who were about to attain the age of 18 -- in the four years after the register was compiled -- and who were so included in it before the last general election.
Interestingly, the Opposition has only raised the point after one of their supporters has said on social media this weekend that he was not included on the register after he turned 18, as a result of a failure to register him, although he had the right to be registered. It is therefore quite incredible that they should now pretend to take the moral high ground on the issue, when the election was called some weeks ago. Such issues would be resolved once the GSLP/Liberal policy of having an "open" or "rolling" register is implemented, as also recommended by the Independent Commission on Parliamentary and Democratic Reform.
