It’s official
The APNU+AFC alliance was yesterday declared the winner of the general and regional elections after securing 207, 200 votes to the PPP/C’s 202,694 votes to win both the presidency and control over the 65-seat National Assembly.
The final tally announced by the Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom) showed an even closer race than suggested by preliminary results as the alliance won by only 4,506 votes. It will control 33 seats in the National Assembly, while the PPP/C will have the remaining 32.
The official declaration, which came five days after Monday’s polls, was made after a majority vote by Gecom Commissioners at a special meeting, signaling that the PPP/C-nominated commissioners had opposed it. The PPP/C has claimed that the electoral process was manipulated although former president Donald Ramotar yesterday acknowledged the new president.
Addressing the heads of the western missions and members of the media after an over one-hour delay at the Gecom command centre in Kingston, Gecom Chairman Dr Steve Surujbally officially declared APNU+AFC candidate David Granger as president-elect at 1.30 pm.
Surujbally, in his opening remarks, said Gecom had made a genuine effort “to do right and not to look right. That was the order of the day and that is Gecom’s overarching guideline.”
He said that he had spoken at length about the reasons for the delays, while noting that it is compulsory for this to be rectified “if the nation is to get its results on time, quickly.”
The total number of valid votes cast for the general elections was 412, 012, which represented a turnout of 72% of the 570,708 registered voters.
From the final results presented by Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield, the race between APNU+AFC and the PPP/C was close. APNU+AFC won the key Region Four by a large margin and regions 7, 8 and 10. In Region 8, it won by one vote. The PPP/C won the other six regions.
Region 4 was key for the coalition, which secured 113, 856 votes to the PPP/C’s 70, 241 votes.
None of the small parties came close to amassing enough votes to secure a seat.
For the regional elections, the coalition also came out on top, having secured 205, 001 votes to the PPP/C 202, 268. The total number of valid votes cast at the regional elections was 410, 578.
Although all the declarations from the Returning Officers for the 10 Electoral Districts were received by the end of Friday morning, Gecom, in keeping with legal requirements, had to delay the announcement of the final declaration until midday yesterday to give contesting parties the opportunity to raise objections if they had any.
When Stabroek News arrived at the command centre at 11.29 am, PPP/C candidate Charles Ramson Jnr was seated outside the media centre with documents in hand. He later revealed in a Facebook post that he attempted to get a letter to the Returning Officer for Region 4 before noon in a final bid to get a recount. However, he said her office was locked and her staff was not there. He left without delivering his letter of request.
The scheduled noon press conference to announce the final declaration of the results took an hour and 10 minutes to begin. Chargé d’Affaires of the US Embassy Bryan Hunt, British High Commissioner Gregory Quinn and Canadian High Commissioner Nicole Giles as well as observers and members of the press corps grew impatient as the time went. At one point the gathering was informed that the commissioners were in a meeting. Half an hour later Surujbally appeared followed by Lowenfield. The declaration of the results lasted less than 30 minutes.
