Saying that it has no faith in the Guyana Elections Commission’s (GECOM) use of Statements of Poll (SOPs) for the tabulation of Region Four votes, the Private Sector Commission (PSC) yesterday called for a recount of all ballots for the electoral district.
If GECOM agrees to a ballot recount, the PSC said it would ask the regional and international community to assist in overlooking the process to ensure there is transparency.
“That [counting of ballots] is the ultimate proof of the votes. If you have a dispute with regard to the examination of the SOPs, you then have a recount which goes back to the boxes, which as far as we know are still sealed and intact,” PSC elections observer Kit Nascimento yesterday told a press conference..
Agreeing with Nascimento, PSC Chairman Gerry Gouveia said that should GECOM agree, the PSC would ask the regional and international community to help facilitate the process. “We will certainly call on CARICOM [and] the international community to help supervise that process, if and when it becomes necessary, so that we will have a return to the ballot boxes for Region Four and it must be supervised internationally,” he said.
CARICOM Chairperson and Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley has said that the regional body will assist in whatever way it could to bring an end to the impasse following the March 2nd general and regional elections. President David Granger and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo told a CARICOM delegation, which left here on Thursday following a two-day visit to discuss the elections issues, that they were committed to upholding the law to resolve the current elections impasse.
Gouveia said that the PSC wants the public to know that the organisation is not agreeing with or choosing any political party, but merely wants a legal and credible outcome of the March 2 polls.
“It doesn’t matter who wins the elections, it matters that the process is legal and fair and credible and that is the position of the private sector,” he said.
Expressing support for the European Union’s (EU) request to GECOM to see the SOPs that the elections body is using for its tabulation, Gouveia said that GECOM should acquiesce as this will help give some credence to the commission.
“In the interest of transparency, people need to be afforded the opportunity to examine the SOPs that the Returning Officer is calling his numbers from,” he stressed.
“Why is GECOM refusing to put those SOPs on the table for examination,” Nascimento questioned. He added that in all his decades of witnessing elections here, he has “never seen such a barefaced attempt to steal an election.”
On Thursday, the EU Election Observation Mission wrote to the Returning Officer of Region Four, Clairmont Mingo, asking to see the SOPs that he used to prepare a spreadsheet of results which is intended to be utilised for the declaration of results for the district.
Signed by the mission’s Deputy Chief Observer Alexander Matus, the letter said the request was being made pursuant to Section 4 (1) and (3) of the General Elections (Observers) Act, as well as section 6, 7, 8 and 9 of the Administrative Arrangement between the Delegation of the European Union in Guyana and GECOM.
“I am hereby requesting to examine the Statements of Polls based on which you have prepared the spreadsheet of results before the ascertainment of results for Region Four is completed,” the letter stated.
‘Depressing’
Gouveia said that he supports the EU mission’s call and that Mingo should agree, even as he lamented that the sloth of the process has seen business decline and the business community worried over its future.
“This is exceptionally depressing for the business community. When we saw the [American, British, Canadian and EU] representatives walked away today [yesterday] from that process, we knew the international community has given up,” he said.
“The private sector is terrified about having to do our business in a country where the possibility of having fabricated elections results become final. We are terrified of that because businesses need to operate in a democratic society. We need an enabling environment to grow our businesses and it would be very difficult to do this in an environment where the rule of law is being flouted and fabricated results are being allowed to appear out of GECOM,” he said.
“What is before us…if we have not been reading the news to understand how the United States government that have huge investments in Guyana, the UK, Canadian governments and the OAS, CARICOM…that is calling and demanding free and fair and credible elections and as we sit here today what GECOM is doing is a farce at this point and time,” he added
Gouveia said that there is still time for a resolution and GECOM should listen to calls that it moves to recount ballots.
“Those Statements of Poll were put on the doors of those polling stations and is a public document. At some point it can be used for verification because it had the signature of the people who were in that room. I feel we have reached a stage where there is so much suspicion over what they were doing that it may be best that when we went there today that all this be televised, let it be public, let there be real transparency of what we are doing,” PSC Executive Norman McLean said, to the agreement of other members of the PSC.
“Let’s go to the boxes,” Gouveia said.
