The presiding officer at a polling station in Berbice has been fired for distributing tendered ballots to voters, Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Chairman Dr. Steve Surujbally has announced.
The incident occurred at Eversham, Berbice and, at a news briefing this afternoon Surujbally said that in instances where GECOM staff lapsed, they would be fired immediately.
“So, they have been removed from their positions for expressed dotish-ness,” he declared, while adding that GECOM has competent staff to fill the resulting vacancies.
Tendered ballots are usually handed out where there is doubt about the eligibility of the person to vote or some other controversy. A decision is later taken on whether the ballot can be validly counted. Otherwise regular ballot papers have to be handed out and this wasn’t the case at Eversham.
“It is very clear what a tendered ballot is there for by law, so when you’re seeing the first four persons go into the polling station and they are issued tendered ballots, you know something is wrong, immediately, or for that matter fourteen,” Surujbally said.
Persons had complained that they were given tendered ballots, this newspaper was told. No information was provided at the briefing on how many voters were affected and if they were then allowed to vote using regular ballots.
Surujbally said the incident was isolated. “It is the only singular occurrence that we know of and I am not worried,” he added.
Meanwhile, he also reported that voting was continuing peacefully despite “some episodes” being encountered in the field. While voter turnout was heavy in the morning, he noted, it has started petering out.
He added that observer groups are calling in and informing of instances where they encounter “aberrations” and GECOM is acting on them immediately. “…We are uncovering, on our own… some anomalies and we are going to be correcting those with immediacy,” he said.