Chief Elections Officer urges public’s help to monitor registration
If you haven’t registered by now you’re almost certainly not going to be able to vote on August twenty seventh, as registration officials will be working hard tonight simply to process the applications already in hand. But while the process is nearing an end, Chief Elections Officer Urban Reyes acknowledged that the people who administer the system are only human.
Urban Reyes, Chief Elections Officer
“I want to appeal to your audience and I don’t know if your tape gets centered out with the news on the same night, but I want to appeal to them that I will be here and my direct line is 24042 and if you notice when you call me, I answer that every time I am in office. I don’t even have a secretary take that call, I answer it myself.
Now I have been very adamant that I don’t want any politician from any political party trying to assist with filing and doing all kinds of stuff in my office; that is for my offices. They have a spot in front of the counter; after eight o’clock tonight my office is closed to the public. There is no need for them to be in my office at all. So I’m asking the public at large to help me with that one. If you find an over eager politician wanting to assist and what not and it’s happening, go to a nearby phone and call me collect; I will accept the charges because I want to know. I do not encourage that at all, at all. I don’t want anything that no one is behind my counter trying to do any work for me. We have people there who are quite capable of doing their own work.”
Q: “As Chief Elections Officer, you are the boss of a large number of registering officers around the whole country, yet many of these persons may owe their job to the good word of a politician, past or present, are you confident or are you concerned that some of these key people may have a greater loyalty to their political patron than to their boss who is you?”
Urban Reyes
“As I’ve said before we’re all human and we’ve come short of a better glory but I believe that my officers across the country have acted responsibly so far and I believe that to the extent that the opposition party have actually been on record to the ruling party saying “call elections now” is an indication that they are pretty satisfied with the list. Therefore I must say that the track record of my offices are impeccable and I have no reason, no reason to doubt or think that they would want to switch one way or the other. I think they are professionals and I have full confidence in them Stewart.”
Q: “Let’s look at the numbers that you have so far. Out of the voting age population it is estimated by the Central Statistical Office of a hundred and sixteen thousand plus people of voting age, you and your staff and the political parties have managed to register over ninety three thousand people, are you happy with that percentage?”
Urban Reyes
“Very happy with that percentage. Initially we had estimated, we made a calculated estimation based on the sample size of the enumeration exercise that we did and we had estimated that we’d be around seventy five to eighty thousand people. We have since exceeded that figure and again I say that it is a very good indication that we have sufficient people to form a decent mandate in this country.”
