Dear Editor,
It is an utter shame and disgrace to the voting population and Guyanese elsewhere to have 24 hours pass and no announcement of substantial results of the 2011 General and Regional Elections. The Guyana Elections Commission had 5 years, yes, 5 long years to prepare for that day and the days following, yet up to Tuesday evening at 21:00 hrs, more than 24 hours after the close of polls, just 17 per cent of the votes were reported to have been counted (NCN).
Never did I foresee such a delay in the election results. With a country with just under 800,000 people, and a voting population of less than 500,000, it is beyond me as to what is causing this slothful release of results by Gecom. Dr Steve Surujbally keeps holding press conferences and keeps wasting the media and the population’s time. He has no real information to present.
Certainly, the next government ought to seek answers from Gecom and demand improvement for the next elections, which brings me to another point.
We boast about Information Communication Technology and can install multi-million dollar machine readable passport systems, but in this day and age we still cannot implement a computerized voting system. Gecom is being put to shame already with paper and pencil voting, whereby they cannot deliver results for just a couple of hundred thousand people, so why, I ask, can some better systems not be put in place so that Guyanese can vote by computer.
I cannot understand this nonsense. People are on edge; are nervous and restless; and crazy assumptions and statements are being publicized, especially via social media like Facebook. Scepticism and half truths are being peddled by some sections of a population that want answers and want results. I can understand people’s hunger at this time for information, which Gecom really did not allow for, especially hours after the polls closed on Monday.
If the system was computerized, as in many parts of America, etc, we would be having instant results mere hours after the close of polls and reporting from polling stations.
But no, we have to wait on Statement of Polls, planes out of the interior are late, and a whole set of other silly excuses.
And don’t blame the PPP/C for wanting a recount, resulting in delayed results. Late Tuesday afternoon the situation was –
Region 1: 2% counted; Region 2: 0% counted; Region 3: 15% counted; Region 4: 19% counted; Region 5: 18% counted, Region 6: 23 % counted; Region 7: 0% counted; Region 8: 0% counted, Region 9: 0% counted; Region 10: 23% counted. This is the ineptitude of the Guyana Elections Commission for you.
Yours faithfully,
Leon Suseran