Image GECOM projected not reassuring for the nation

TIMES INT'L

Dear Editor,

The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) is appalled at the attitude projected by GECOM with respect to the counting of votes. While the electorate accepts transparency and accuracy are unquestionably necessary, people begin to lose patience when the precautions appear to be excessive.

This is particularly the case for a generation raised on cell-phones and the internet.  Moreover, both major parties are being forced to take risks to placate their supporters by what comes across as self-absorbed posturing by GECOM.

The image of GECOM projected at press conferences is not reassuring for a nation on tender-hooks.

Witnessing the Chairman of GECOM, the CEO and a foreign technician playing ‘pass the parcel’ over to who is responsible for releasing results was as unedifying as it was discouraging.

Most of the press conferences were devoted to a bewildering series of distinctions about results which had been “received but not processed”; those which had been partially but not “fully” processed; what was “far too detailed” to project onto a screen and what had been “cleared from the stand-point of the Commission but had now passed for IT processing”.

The foreign technician made the oblique remark that the exercise was “not an official release of data”.  A press representative, clearly frustrated by all the fine distinctions and no results,  was patronizingly informed  that what was available was “too detailed” to be of much use to him.

Cell-phone technology over the past decade has transformed the dissemination of polling results. GECOM was advised as early as the 2001 elections by the Commonwealth Observer Team to begin to take account of it.

Results are in the public domain from the moment the Statement of Poll (SOP) is posted on the door of the polling station.

After a long and generally unpleasant elections campaign, the last thing the Guyanese public need, at this point, is a prolonged and ill-tempered count. The Guyanese people deserve better.

Executive Committee

GHRA

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