Each time that national and regional elections are held in Guyana the spotlight falls on the Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom). That has to do, perhaps, less with Gecom, per se, and more with a history of outright fraud, with a pattern of elections-related controversy pertaining to, among other things, concerns over the integrity of the machinery charged with counting votes, verifying the count and delivering the outcome to the nation. Each general election process in our post-independence history has been, to varying degrees, blighted by such controversies and challenges. Those controversies and challenges pre-date the establishment of Gecom. Some countries have no such elections issues. People vote; and after that they are handed the outcome. The veracity of the result tendered by the elections machinery is more or less taken for granted. It is different in Guyana and there are good reasons why that is so. That, it seems, is just our lot.
This is not a consideration that Gecom can afford to ignore. Setting aside its substantive task of counting, verifying and delivering the results of elections, Gecom must be concerned that the level of efficiency with which it conducts its business is such that as little reason as possible is given to cast aspersions on what it eventually delivers; even seemingly minor glitches and slip-ups might give rise to suggestions of mischief rather than mistake. It is an added burden that Gecom must carry.
This time around was no different. The spotlight was again on Gecom and there were glitches and slip-ups that became the subject of query and in some cases provided reason for official explanation.
This newspaper is ill-positioned to pronounce with authority on the correctness or otherwise of some of the queries that have been raised about Gecom’s performance. Our comment deals with the nexus between the level of efficiency with which Gecom performs its tasks (in this case at the 2011 general and regional elections) and the extent to which it attracts controversy, citing in the process some observations that have been made publicly, particularly by its Chairman, Dr Steve Surujbally and by the Observer Mission of the Organization of American States.
So that our comment focuses on some of the reported occurrences – many seemingly avoidable ones – and the extent to which some of those occurrences point to the need for Gecom to do what is necessary by whatever means are determined to incrementally build public confidence in both its efficiency and its integrity. The higher that level of public confidence becomes, the better our chances of slaying the ghost of elections-related controversy, and after everything that we have had to endure over the years that is not something to be taken lightly.
Some of those occurrences and reported occurrences come easily to mind, like the incorrect issuance of tendered ballots at a polling place by Gecom functionaries, an occurrence deemed sufficiently absurd as to warrant the immediate dismissal of the offending officials and to cause Chairman Surujbally to describe the episode as “dotishness,” and an “excursion into nonsense.” That, indeed, is all that it might have been, though, in our circumstances, it would have been entirely unsurprising if at least some persons had chosen not to take Dr Surujbally’s word for it.
The point to be made here is that in circumstances where significant investments are made in order to ensure that Gecom operational personnel get basic things right, there is really no room for those kinds of “dotishness” and “excursions into nonsense.” That is something that Gecom might wish to consider.
And there appear to have been other occurrences – some of which might also be placed in the realm of “dotishness” and “excursions into nonsense” – raised in a post-polling report prepared by the Observer Mission of the Organization of American States. The observations are blunt, they speak directly to the performance of Gecom and, we expect, they are accurate.
The OAS report alludes, for example, to “voter confusion on the day of elections” resulting, it says, from Gecom’s decision to change the location of polling stations originally published on November 8, some time before polling day” resulting in “some voter confusion regarding information as to where to cast their ballots.” The report quantifies the extent of such “discrepancies” at “a national average of over 5 per cent of polling stations” adding that such discrepancies “were particularly elevated for stations located in Regions 4, 5, 7, 9 and 10.” This, in our view, is a good example of just the kind of occurrence that can provide motive for controversy.
There are other issue to which the OAS Observer Mission draws attention including what it says was the issuance by Gecom, “two days prior to election… of the decision to disallow party scrutineers to apply for certificates to work and thereby vote in the polling station they were observing.” It appears, according to the OAS Observer Mission Report that “in at least one instance in Region 4… this decision had not been relayed to a polling station resulting in a lack of uniform application of the decision and the casting of a ballot by a scrutineer.” Here, while Gecom might insist that its actions broke no rules and were entirely consistent with the law, it appears that the problem reposed less in the correctness of the application of the law and more in the fact that the implementation of the law reflected what the OAS Observer Mission describes as “a lack of uniform application.”
Then there is the pronouncement in the OAS Observer Mission Report that that “the OAS teams stationed at GECOM’s tabulation center in Georgetown observed at least two envelopes containing statements of poll being delivered by an unaccredited and unescorted individual.” Quite frankly, we are unsure as to what to make of this particular observation except perhaps to say that, on the surface at least, and assuming that the OAS Observers saw what they thought they saw, it does not appear to qualify for dismissal simply as either an act of “dotishness” or an “excursion into nonsense.”
Turning to the issue which again became the cause of much of the public post-elections criticism levelled at Gecom we again cite the observation made by the OAS Observer Mission Report that “at 6am on November 29th“ its operatives noted “a significant discrepancy between the number of statements of poll received by the Returning Officer for Region Four and those processed at GECOM’s headquarters,” an obvious comment on the pace at which the count was proceeding. Interestingly, Chairman Surujbally himself made at least one public comment on the protracted periods between Gecom’s dissemination, through the of the media, of the various batches of results from the regions, conceding, it seemed, that it was desirable that the pace of the count quicken.
No one would reasonably question Dr Surujbally’s point that the requirement of getting it right has to take precedence over hurrying the process. On the other hand his remark about Gecom not being prepared to “compromise efficiency on the altar of expediency” appears somewhat overdone since that is not what is being asked for. Gecom’s entirely understandable concern with a count that is accurate and verifiable which, of course reduces room for legitimate query, cannot altogether ignore the climate of volatility and tension that usually prevails during the interregnum between the close of poll and the delivery of the result and the attendant importance of reducing that interregnum, not by delivering a rushed job that could backfire afterwards, but by recognizing that the imperative of accuracy cannot be taken to mean that the time frame within which the final results is delivered becomes altogether unimportant. After all, there have been occasions in the past when queries regarding the veracity of elections in Guyana have been linked directly to the time it has taken to deliver the results.
In what appears to be an overarching comment on the quality of Gecom’s performance over the period between the start of polling on November 28 and the delivery of the results of the elections the OAS Observer Mission Report pronounces with an unmistakable bluntness. In the view of the Observer Mission it was “unfortunate that the smooth functioning of the process seen throughout the day was replaced by inefficient procedures and a lack of coordination in the processing and release of preliminary results.” Add to that the Gecom Chairman’s own allusion to instances of “dotishness” and “excursions into nonsense“ and it certainly appears that the Commission was unable to evade some of those arguably avoidable pitfalls that have done the image of our elections process and the machinery that manages it, no favours.
