Members of the ‘Change Team,’ which contested for posts in the recent Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) elections, led by Gregory Gaspar, will be moving to file court action against the elections officer Herman DeSouza should inconsistencies in the voters’ count be revealed.
This was related last evening by team supporter Jermaine Hermanstyne, who stated that if the official breakdown of numbers provided by the officer do not correspond with the figures they were in receipt of, two separate court actions would be filed— one challenging the elections process, and other against DeSouza, who had responsibility for overseeing said process.
Hermanstyne said they are still awaiting an official announcement from DeSouza regarding the elections results.
After the results of the GPSU’s elections were released on Tuesday evening, members of the executive council failed to show at the union hall yesterday, or make contact with the contestants
When Stabroek News visited the GPSU headquarters yesterday around 2:30 pm, an employee there informed that no one from the executive council had made an appearance yesterday, neither had the elections officer come in. Calls to DeSouza, and re-elected President Patrick Yarde yesterday, went unanswered.
The GPSU said on Tuesday afternoon via press release that incumbent Patrick Yarde had been re-elected as president for another term, while his lone challenger Gregory Gaspar and his supporters that evening said they were still awaiting a formal declaration despite their concerns about the integrity of the process.
The release, which included a scanned copy of the stamped executive council elections results, listed Yarde’s name first with 1,024 votes, and showed Gaspar trailing behind at 842 votes. The release was accompanied by a cover letter bearing DeSouza’s signature.
Last Tuesday, the GPSU announced its intention to hold its elections that coming Thursday, after an injunction barring it from proceeding until financial statements were submitted, was discharged by Justice Nareshwar Harnanan.
However, the elections process has been marred by conflict over discrepancies in the process, which has seen the police being called in multiple times during the tallying.
Unofficial results which were posted on the notice board by the Elections Officer on Saturday night showed that Gaspar was in the lead with 542 votes, while Yarde was at 155 votes from seven ballot boxes that were so far counted.
Gaspar had stated that they were awaiting the results of statements of poll from 12 other ballot boxes that were already counted by the elections officials. He said that they were told by De Souza that they will receive those results on yesterday’s date.
In a May Day statement that was issued on Monday, Yarde, who has been at the helm of the union for over two decades, signalled that there was interference in the election process.
The statement claimed that the interference saw the disruption of the counting of votes and undermining the credibility of the election process.
Meanwhile, the union is still set to attend court on May 10 to answer to an action alleging that the executive had failed to properly manage the union in accordance with its rules.
The action has called for the Yarde-led council to be suspended until it could produce the Treasurer’s reports and/or the Auditor General’s reports for 2004 to 2017.
