PRESS STATEMENT

PPP WELCOMES HOUSE TO HOUSE REGISTRATION

The people’s Progressive Party welcomes the beginning of House to House Registration. This process is expected to give us a new voters list and by continuous registration to have it updated.

This is important since it will bring the holding of Local Government Elections, last held in 1994 closer. These elections were delayed since 1997 for one reason or another.

The PPP has been calling for Local Government election for years now. The Party is of the view that Local Government elections are important in empowering the people in the communities and also vital to strengthening the democratic process as a whole.

The Party was hopeful that these elections would have been held immediately after the September 2006 election, with the voters list of that elections being used as a preliminary voters list. Since the elections were verified free and fair the task of making adjustments to reflect any changes would have been easy.

The Opposition were obviously unprepared for these elections and made efforts to delay the process calling for a new registration.

Now that this process has started the PPP hopes that all political parties will give full cooperation to GECOM to get the job done well without delay. We hop e that GECOM will be ready to conduct the Local Government elections by the middle of 2008.

The PPP calls on all Guyanese to support this process.