The Carter Center can return to Guyana to observe the national recount of votes if it requests permission through the right channels and complies with the measures in place to prevent the spread of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), according to government spokesman Joseph Harmon.
“If you are coming from overseas, you have to be tested and you have to have a certificate that is valid, I believe, for seven days or so. If you do not have that and you get permission and you come here you have to be quarantined for 14 days,” Harmon said in response to question posed by Sunday Stabroek yesterday outside the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC).
Harmon, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National COVID-19 Taskforce Secretariat, told the media yesterday that his government has nothing against the elections observer group.
“The Carter Center has been coming here since 1992 and they have done an excellent job,” he said.
Harmon was asked why government failed to grant permission for a Center observer to board a flight last Monday to Guyana.
“First of all, when the application was made, the application was made for an aircraft to come and then at the last minute, we were advised that the Carter Center team would be on the aircraft. We didn’t say take them off, we didn’t say that they should come, we didn’t say anything like that. What we learnt is that when the aircraft arrived here, they were not there; they were not on the flight,” he said.
He contended that the CARICOM team here is enough to offer validation to the process and attempted to argue that the Recount Order provides for only one foreign observer group to be present.
The Order actually states that the process shall be conducted in the presence of representatives of political parties that contested the said elections and be observed by International and Local Observers accredited by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) and its advisors.
Two weeks ago, GECOM invited all observer missions which had been accredited for the May 2 general and regional elections to return to observe the recount of the votes cast. The Center, which is one of the five missions so far accredited, had attempted to have one member of its team travel to Guyana to observe the process but failed to secure permission from the government.
Last Monday, the group said that it had “deployed an observer to Miami who was prepared to travel to Georgetown, but unfortunately, his flight was denied approval to carry international election observers.”
Harmon and other members of the administration had remained silent until yesterday even as the United States, Canada and the United Nations urged that they facilitate the Center’s return to observe the process.
The Center has publicly stated that it “continues to reach out to government officials to understand what is required to allow Center staff to return to Guyana to observe the recount process” and added that it remains committed to providing independent observation of Guyana’s electoral process, including the recount.
Currently, Guyana’s borders and those of its neighbours are closed to incoming international flights except in special cases. One such case was the team of scrutineers from CARICOM which arrived on Friday. The three-member team was granted a special dispensation by the National COVID-19 Task Force following assurances from CARICOM Secretary-General Irwin LaRocque that the members would be tested for the virus and would only enter Guyana if they tested negative.
Other instances include flights to carry American citizens from Guyana back to the United States. These flights have typically arrived empty but the United States Embassy had offered both the Carter Center and the International Republican Institute a berth on a May 4 charter.
“As part of the May 4 flight that has received approval, the Embassy requested through diplomatic note that the incoming flight carry international observers from the Carter Center. This request was made as part of the US commitment to a free, fair and transparent recount process,” the embassy’s public affairs officer, Violeta Talandis said last Sunday.
She said that while the embassy received a response acknowledging receipt of their request no answer to the request was received.
She stressed that the diplomatic note referenced the observers’ intentions to comply with the COVID-19 testing and quarantine measures.
