The Electoral Observa-tion Mission (EOM) of the Organisation of American States yesterday called on the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to improve its dissemination of preliminary election results and has made a slew of recommendations including consideration of state funding to political parties.
“In order to promote equity in the electoral process the mission recommends the consideration of some form of state funding for political parties,” Chief of Mission Lisa Shoman said at a news briefing at the Marriott Hotel yesterday. She added that it was also expressed by a wide variety of stakeholders that access to state media was not equitable.
Speaking to Stabroek News after the briefing, Shoman, a former Belizean Foreign Minister, said that the OAS will continue to lobby for equitable media access as it is imperative to the electoral process. She also highlighted the work of GECOM’s Media Monitoring Unit in bringing to light the disparity in access to state media.
“While a legal framework already exists, there is a clear need to revise and modernise aspects of the law which are obsolete and which allows for violations and noncompliance with few sanctions,” Shoman, an attorney at law added.
Members of the mission will stay for the final election results and are scheduled to leave on Friday and Shoman observed that Guyana still has to overcome geographical and logistical challenges.
She urged GECOM to implement a system to disclose preliminary results which could serve to defuse tension and avoid incidents of violence on election night. GECOM yesterday afternoon released preliminary results after coming under pressure over the delay. The mission’s preliminary report includes recommendations aimed at improving the electoral body by ensuring that a more timely procedure for cleansing the voters list and updating voter registry exists.
Additionally, Shoman said that in order to avoid long lines of electors waiting to cast their votes, the mission recommends the introduction of a standardised procedure that will allow for verification of electors so that at least one or two additional voters could be cleared while one voter is casting his or her ballot. The mission commended GECOM for its effective enforcement of the 33% of females quota on the List of Candidates and noted that Guyana is the only Anglophone Caribbean nation with this requirement.
The mission chief also expressed concern at provocative language on the campaign trail. “OAS/EOM laments the tone of the political debates leading up to Election Day and urges all political parties to build a constructive dialogue based on programmatic actions that benefits the Guyanese people and avoid aggressive persons disqualifications,” she said.
“We were concerned that the rhetoric seemed to be harsh to put it bluntly and we were concerned that a lot of these statements were divisive,” Shoman said adding that political parties should be focused on the issues rather than the personalities. Meantime, Shoman said that the preliminary report indicated that over 90% of issues that were reported to the OAS turned out to be false. “The violence seemed to be contained, seemed to be in certain geographic regions, did not seem to have strayed any further and seemed to have been brought under control reasonably well and reasonably quickly by police and uniformed services,” she stated. The mission head brushed off any insinuations that persons awaiting results or casting their votes were militant noting that “I wouldn’t say they were militant I would say they were loud.”
The mission head observed that the energy level of people casting their votes earlier on Election Day and then waiting outside various polling station for the Statement of Polls was charged but positive. Additionally, she noted that throughout the mission, the OAS/EOM did not believe that electors would not be willing to accept any elections result. Shoman stated that persons were “very good natured” and said that chanting by people was in relation to ballot box monitoring. The mission was present as the ballots began to come in slowly at GECOM’s command centre. Shoman said that while the process was slow, the electoral body has a responsibility toward accuracy.
“I understand that some of the issues with the preliminary results also had to do with the fact that there was some demonstrations, there were some groups of people outside polling stations,” Shoman stated.
A total of 22 observers from 13 countries across the Americas participated in the observer mission and visited 379 polling stations. The view was expressed that there were significant improvements by GECOM as it related to transparency, logistics and inclusiveness of political parties in the process.
