There were no major hiccups during the disciplined services voting on Monday, according to the Electoral Assistance Bureau (EAB), which says it is prepared to monitor next week’s general elections.
As far as the EAB reports show they were no major hiccups, Director Abbass Mancey told Stabroek News. He noted that more than 50 percent of polling stations were covered by the organisation’s observers. EAB is one of several local observers.
The voting by members of the Guyana Police Force, the Guyana Defence Force and the Guyana Prison Service allowed EAB observers to tighten up on a number of areas, according to Mancey.
He noted that a number of observers were unfamiliar with the absence of the six-digit number on the ballot papers used by servicemen and women, which the Guyana Elections Commis-sion (GECOM) said would be stamped when the ballots cast are dispatched to their respective polling stations for inclusion in the count at next Monday’s general elections.
Mancey said since Monday they have been given refreshers about that process and are now aware of the procedure. “From the disciplined services voting, EAB recognised gaps in their own training… [but] training went well, [and] we are satisfied about the competency with the persons we have as observers and I have confidence that everything will go smooth on Monday,” he added.
On the matter of preparations for next Monday, Mancey was confident that the EAB would have more than 1,800 persons to cover the more than 2,000 polling stations countrywide.
A number of persons, he said, have been trained and placed on standby to substitute for persons who might drop-out on polling day.
“Some people drop out because of election anxiety and other personal reasons we have taken that into consideration and have a back up plan for those cases,” he remarked.
The EAB, he said, is a non-partisan organisation and he stressed that its observers would not be at polling stations to observe one political party but working in the best interest of democracy for Guyanese.
