Officials of the Guyana Elections Commission announced that the cross-matching of the fingerprints in the National Register of Registrants database could be completed in one month. According to the officials, a US based company, Cogent Systems, has the capacity to complete the cross-matching within a timeframe that would avoid delays to the elections.
Cogent Systems is a manufacturer of automated fingerprint identification systems. The company is owned by Gemalto, a security company headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Gemalto, which has total assets of US$5B, is said to be the world’s largest manufacturer of SIM cards.
The news that Cogent could provide the cross matching services in a timely manner is a boost to GECOM’s effort to deliver credible elections within the shortest possible time. A major requirement of credible elections is a clean list. The cross matching of the expanded database will result in increased confidence in the list produced by GECOM. This confidence will be further enhanced by the extended Claims and Objections period. During this period there will be an opportunity to improve the quality of the list by objecting to names on the list, and by adding names through claims.
There is widespread concerns that the Opposition PPP, which was in government from 1992 to 2015, orchestrated massive fraudulent registration during their time in government. It is suspected that several thousand fraudulent registration were done between 2011, when the PPP became a minority government, and the 2015 elections. This suspicion was confirmed by the several fake birth certificates and ID cards which were uncovered by GECOM in Region 9.
GECOM also announced that the Jamaican Elections Commission could print ID cards for all persons registered during the recent House to House Registration. People who did not register will not have the new ID cards.