Envoys from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada yesterday teamed up with the Private Sector Commission (PSC) to observe the electoral process in Essequibo, Berbice, Linden and Georgetown and all said they were satisfied with the process.
“The process was quite smooth. Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom) officials were well prepared and confident in running the polls,” Canadian High Commissioner Nicole Giles told Stabroek News, shortly after the flight returned at Ogle this afternoon.
She informed that the group left the city at around 9 am and travelled to Skeldon in Berbice, Anna Regina in the Essequibo and Linden in Region Ten where they observed the polling process.
Her position was echoed by British High Commissioner Greg Quinn who added that they received no complaints from anyone at the two polling stations they visited in each of the three counties.
United States Charge d’affaires Bryan Hunt pointed out that he believed Gecom did well in training polling day staff as he said that the procedures in the city were mirrored in the other counties. The diplomats and PSC head Ramesh Persaud expressed their satisfaction at the overall process and pointed to the fact that polling day staff and equipment continued to work even in the instance of a power outage.
Hunt also said that from the information gathered as at yesterday around 4 pm, there had been a big turnout of the electorate to vote. “It seems that there was a very high turnout in all of the locations we were at, in the morning period, which is probably higher than what some of the staff had seen in previous elections,” he posited.
However, he made clear that they would have to wait until close of polls to know the overall turnout and if the preliminary findings were correct.
While in Linden, the team held a brief press meeting with Linden journalists at the Linmine Technical Institute shortly after arriving at the Mackenzie Airstrip around noon.
The observer team gave the elections a clean bill of health based on how closely Gecom stuck to its mandate and the laws governing elections in Guyana.
They also commended the Guyanese electorate for having an incidence-free election from the time polling began at 6 am, up to midday and the members of the team expressed the hope that such a situation would continue until polling closed at 6 pm. Hunt said it was commendable that polling occurred so smoothly and he was informed that by lunchtime most of the electorate in Region Ten had already exercised their franchise. He said that people complained of lines moving slowly but that complaint is given everywhere.
He explained that a number of observer missions are in the country, operating independently of each but in a coordinated fashion. “So, we are working to share information among ourselves [to] make sure we don’t have duplication of efforts,” Hunt said. “The group here represents the US Embassy, the British High Commission, the Canadian High Commission, the Private Sector Commission. We also have in the field today representatives from the Carter Center, the Organisation of American States, the Caribbean Community, the Union of South American Nations….”
He added that 78 operatives from the US Embassy have been spread throughout the ten Regions of the country and after the elections, the US would share its findings with Gecom.
Quinn said that the Commonwealth would produce a formal report, which it would present to the relevant local authorities.
Persaud said earlier in the day, the team visited several polling places in Georgetown and two polling places at Skeldon, Corentyne – one had five polling stations and the other had two. After the brief meeting with the media and observing the process at the Linmine Technical Institute, the team sped off to visit a number of polling stations in Linden.
The meeting of the observer team and Linden journalists was organized by President of the Linden Chamber of Commerce, Kevin DeJonge, who along with other members of the Chamber participated in the meeting.
Earlier, members of the media, who had turned at the Linden Technical Institute for the meeting before the arrival of the observer team, were corralled into the guard hut at the entrance of the institution by a police officer, who told them that they could not gather within 200 yards of the polling station that was located on the ground floor of the institution.
