Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall on Monday introduced the final amendment to the Representation of the People Act (ROPA), to address what he said was a simple oversight regarding the omission of a legal definition for a deputy to the supernumerary returning officer.
The Attorney General made his presentation at the sitting of the National Assembly. He explained that over the years, the House would have enacted a menu of amendments covering wide areas under both the ROPA and National Registration Act (NRA).
Nandlall said the House also consolidated and revised a number of different pieces of laws and amendments to these principal acts.
“In the end, we now have a consolidated NRA and a consolidated ROPA where these two mega pieces of elections legislation have in them all the requisite amendments that would have passed in the last three decades.”
Among the amendments, electoral sub-districts in three traditional electoral districts were created in Regions Four, Three, and Six. The intent of the amendments, the Attorney General continued, was to ensure that these populous districts have tabulation exercises in a central place in each electoral district, no longer in one central place but in the newly devised electoral sub-districts using known electoral divisions which already existed.
As such, Region Four, for example, now recognises the North and South Georgetown districts, as well as the East Coast of Demerara and the East Bank of Demerara.
Nandlall explained that what will happen here, is that votes cast in each of these sub-districts will be ascertained by a new officer, now styled a supernumerary returning officer in the particular sub-district.
“What will happen here is that all the political parties representative, the observers and all those who are statutorily required to be present at the ascertainment exercise will be present but that exercise will now be conducted in relation to the votes casts in that sub district and the person instead who will be manning that exercise will be the supernumerary returning officer.”
This exercise will now be done at four different centres in the case of Region Four to avoid any fraudulent acts, the Attorney General pointed out.
He said, however, that when the bill was enacted in 2022, it did not include in the definition of a supernumerary returning officer, someone to deputise his or her function. He said when one draws the analogy between the supernumerary officer and the returning officer, the supernumerary officer is a minimised version of a returning officer, and it would be recognised that the returning officer has a deputy in ROPA, but the amendment did not include a deputy for the supernumerary returning officer. This bill now seeks to make that correction.
