GEORGETOWN – A STRONG SENSE of expectation and an underlying unease enveloped Georgetown yesterday as Guyanese waited for the final tally from Monday’s general election that featured a record turnout of over 80 per cent of the country’s 475 000-plus voters.
Hours after the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) gave its second update for the day, the general results last night showed opposition party, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), leading by just over 2 000 votes from the ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) in what certainly looked set to be a close race.
National results by 7 p.m. were: APNU 30 748 votes, Alliance For Change 6 777, PPP-C 28 573 and the fledgling The United Force (TUF) 77. However, only 14 per cent of the vote had been officially counted, according to GECOM.
Delays were, in fact, the order of the day. By late yesterday evening, GECOM still had not received the statements of polls (SOP) from regions 1, 7, 8 and 9, mainly because of late aircraft arrivals from those outlying regions.
“We had expected that the aircraft bringing these statements from these districts would’ve touched down at the Oval Airport by midday today,” said GECOM’s public relations officer Vishnu Persaud, stating that one was slated to arrive from Barima-Waini at 3:30 p.m., another from the upper Takutu and Essequibo was awaiting the statements of polls (SOP) from one district and would arrive by 5:30, while the other from Cuyuni-Mazaruni was slated to land around 6 p.m.
A further delay arose after the PPP/C called for recounts of several boxes in the East Bank Demerara and Georgetown areas which, incidentally, are APNU or traditional People’s National Congress (PNC) strongholds.
Earlier in the day, a supporter of the PPP/C had posted on social media network Facebook that this party had won the election, despite preliminary results showing APNU leading consistently all day, but the post was quickly removed. Noting this occurrence, Persaud said: “Please allow me to state categorically the official general results will be declared by the Chief Election Officer and by no other person.”
Remarking on the slow pace of the counting process, GECOM chairman Dr Steve Surujbally said the elections commission could not afford to sacrifice exactitude, thoroughness or efficiency on the altar of expediency.
“It’s a part of the efficiency which causes us to be inefficient, I suppose, and we have a process where as soon as the SOP arrives, it is logged in and verified. The individual SOPs that come in are then scanned, and verification of these statements is done by the commissioners [who] initial them to ensure that each is a genuine SOP that doesn’t get lost in the mass of SOPs that are coming in,” he explained, noting that instances of bundles of SOPs disappearing in past elections had precipitated this course.
After the commissioners initial the statements, copies are made and further verified for data entry.
Local journalists who had seen the process before said results should be finalized by the end of today – “if you’re lucky”, they said – unless further recounts were called by any of the four parties.
Guyanese can still quickly recall the memories of violent protests in the aftermath of general elections in this Caribbean/South American country, and this was clear yesterday as several vendors in Stabroek Market spoke of “feeling uneasy” during this waiting period.
Also, some mainly East Indian businesspersons did not open their booths in the market or their stores on Regent Street, since that street has in the past been pillaged by protestors.
“If you look across the street you’ll see a lot of the Indian businesspeople and vendors ain’t come today, but when people ready to protest they don’t see colour,” said clothing booth owner Sonia; while Samantha stated matter-of-factly, “I have to come out and sell clothes if I want to make money.”
Meantime, the wait continues.
