Dear Editor,
We cannot have free and fair elections when bogus data is being processed.
GECOM has failed to deliver a timely official declaration of results to the nation for Guyana’s General and Regional Elections held on March 2, 2020. After billions of dollars of taxpayers’ dollar were spent by GECOM to ensure that resources and systems are in place for the delivery of timely election results; we have instead been consumed with unwarranted and unnecessary delays in announcing the preliminary and official results.
The inexplicable introduction on March 4, 2020 of a spreadsheet of unknown origin that was being used as a source to count the votes for Region 4 and replace the legally required use of the statements of poll is alarming and wholly unacceptable.
We cannot have free and fair elections when bogus data is being processed by the body responsible for the management of the elections and have the bogus data mixed in with authentic data sourced from official statements of poll.
We of Change Guyana recognize the importance of having preliminary and official results sourced from the statements of poll.
If GECOM is unable to provide preliminary results within twelve hours after voting has ended, the political parties that have access to all the statement of polls should publish an unofficial summary of the results to bring some semblance of calm and clarity to an already overstressed nation and prevent the disruption of economic and social activities in parts of Guyana, as is presently occurring.
It is an untenable and illogical system that allows party leaders to claim victory, while disallowing the parties from providing available numerical evidence to support such claims. We have to put country and common sense over a convoluted GECOM system that is ensnared with partisanship as evidenced by the use of spreadsheet data of unknown origin and unknown authorship.
Change Guyana hopes good sense will prevail, and that the Region 4 count is completed in accordance with the law to allow for the official declaration of results.
Post elections, we must reform GECOM to enable an electronic based system that guarantees results within twenty-four hours, have a more participatory and inclusive body of Commissioners and ensure that a public release of first count information is published immediately after the initial vote count and tabulation of the statement of polls.
Yours faithfully,
Robert Badal
Change Guyana
