With all of the ballot boxes now recounted after a gruelling 33-day exercise, the unofficial final result shows that the opposition PPP/C will win the presidency and 33 seats in Parliament with the incumbent APNU+AFC securing 31 and the list joining parties of LJP, ANUG and TNM capturing one.
The total number of valid votes cast was 460,352 which would give a quotient of 7,082 votes for each seat in the 65-seat legislature. The total number of voters was 464,565 which means that 4,213 votes were classified as spoilt for various reasons.
At the end of yesterday, Statements of Recount (SoRs) for 98.4% of the ballots have been tabulated for District Four while 99.40% have been processed for the entire country. Figures from the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) showed up to last evening that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic had secured 230,328 valid votes while the APNU+AFC had captured 217,259 votes with a few more boxes still to be tabulated.
In the contentious District Four, which is a stronghold of the incumbent, 116,280 votes have since been tabulated in its favour while the PPP secured 77,912.
The last of 2,339 ballot boxes from the general and regional elections was recounted yesterday afternoon at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) to sighs of relief after 11-hour sessions over the period. The recount concluded at approximately 5.15 pm. A total of 74 ballot boxes were counted yesterday by the 12 stations.
The end of the recount means that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) can now begin the process towards the declaration of a final result once the final tabulation of all of the boxes is completed. GECOM spokeswoman Yolanda Ward last evening said a total of 2,325 Statements of Recount for the general elections were tabulated yesterday while 2,244 were completed for the regional elections.
Party Agents are scheduled to return this morning at 10.30 for the continuation of the tabulation process. The outstanding 14 SoRs for the general election and 95 SoRs for the regional election will be tabulated today.
Interruption
The tabulation process was interrupted yesterday for approximately one hour as a result of a poor internet connection.
Presidential Candidate of The Citizen Initiative Rhonda Ann Lam told Stabroek News that while the disruption is viewed by some as deliberate it was not so. She explained that throughout the week they have observed the internet connection to be unreliable.
“This is coincidence with the stream as it has been having issues for a while… All throughout this week persons have been telling me that live streaming isn’t working well… So this is about three or four days we have been having issues but today it interrupted the process because the live stream wasn’t working and NCN (National Communications Network) was having issues to broadcast it,” Lam said, while explaining that the studio was having difficulties in receiving the live feed from the ACCC.
The tabulation was scheduled to start at 3pm daily but yesterday’s process got underway at approximately 4pm.
Lam suggested that the tabulation of the remaining SoRs can be completed just after lunch today once there is no further interruption. All the outstanding SoRs to be tabulated are from the District Four.
