The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) says it will today be meeting with the People’s Progressive Party to give clarity on a number of issues raised by the party about alleged infractions when the Disciplined Services voted last Saturday.
“We will be meeting with the PPP to assuage their concerns and explain any anomalies they might have perceived to have occurred on the disciplined services voting day. We meet with them tomorrow (today),” GECOM Chairman Dr Steve Surujbally told Stabroek News yesterday.
The meeting comes in the wake of correspondence sent to GECOM by the party in which it stated that its agents noted areas of concern when the disciplined services voted last Saturday.
Party Secretary Clement Rohee informed a press conference yesterday about the letter that was dispatched. He said that a main area of concern was the high number of disciplined services men and women who voted without a national identification card.
When it was pointed out to Rohee that this was permissible as once a person’s name was on the voter’s list and they turned up at their respective polling stations they could be identified from GECOM’s folio which would have their photograph and bio data available, he expressed shock. “I have never heard GECOM say that …I never heard them say that a person can walk off the road and claim to be someone, who may have died,” he stated. When he was informed of the process by a reporter he tersely noted that the reporter was arguing as if she was a GECOM official and that he would await an official answer from GECOM. “I have raised my concern let GECOM clarify it,” he said.
GECOM’s Chairman posited that maybe the press misinterpreted that Rohee was not aware of voting without an ID card. “They are very aware of it…I think that the people at the news don’t understand what Mr. Rohee is saying. Of course people can. If they don’t have ID cards, they can vote if their name is on the list. The folio is used to support their candidacy to vote…of course you can vote this is the law. If your name is on the list at the polling station to which you have been assigned to vote. What is so difficult with that?” he questioned.
Surujbally further added that the PPP’s letter to the commission did not highlight voting without an ID card but expressed concern at the number of persons that voted without the card. “What they said in the correspondence was that they found a lot of people voted without having their ID card. The issue was not on the voting without ID cards, the issue was the number,” he stressed.
Giving statistics that his party’s observers reported, Rohee said that 165 out of 207 persons at Tacama and at Camp Seweyo, 61, voted without an ID card. He said that the officers told the PPP’s observers that they were told not to turn up with their ID cards.
Other areas of concern was that a polling officer attached to the Brickdam Canteen polling station, had on her hand a band supporting APNU, at Eve Leary one officer took a ballot paper out of the polling station, poor quality pencils, ballot agents not accounting for used and unused ballots and their agents not being allowed entry to vehicles taking the ballot boxes to GECOM, although APNU’s agents were allowed.
He said that the concerns were documented to GECOM so that on E- Day Monday, May 11th there would not be a repeat of the alleged infractions.
