14 EU observers deployed to monitor electoral activities across Guyana

As part of their work to monitor the upcoming September 1 General and Regional Elections, the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) has deployed 14 long-term observers across all 10 administrative regions in Guyana to monitor electoral activities leading up to next month’s polls.
The deployment of the 14 long-term observers has effectively begun the mission’s full-scale monitoring activity.

Deputy Chief Observer Vania Angelova explained that the work of the long-term observers will provide essential insights and form the basis of the mission’s impartial and fact-based assessment of Guyana’s electoral process.
“Our long-term observers will meet with the different stakeholders in the regions. They will meet with political parties and candidates contesting there. They will meet with the local branches of the elections administration. They will also meet with civil society, local media and all other interlocutors who are present on the ground,” Angelova told reporters during a briefing on Wednesday morning prior to the team’s deployment.
She added, “…And they will make independent, neutral and fact-based assessments of the election preparations and also the election process in general in the different locations where they are deployed.”
These 14 long-term observers – all of whom adhere to the EU Code of Conduct – hail from different countries and work in pairs of two across all 10 regions. Some of these observers are tasked with monitoring activities in more than one region.
According to the Deputy Chief Observer, the observers will remain at those locations even after the September 1 polling day to monitor the post-election atmosphere.
Prior to their deployment, she noted that the long-term observers received comprehensive briefings on the electoral process, the political environment, the legal framework, and the media and social context in Guyana.
“We work in an independent, impartial manner… And I also look forward to the different stakeholders at the regional level collaborating with us for contributing to the transparency and the credibility of these elections,” Angelova said.
As the September 1 elections near, the EU Observation Mission will be joined by another 20 short-term observers to field a 50-member team that will be monitoring the voting, counting and tabulation process.
Only last week, the EU EOM’s core team of eight members arrived in Guyana and has already met with a series of stakeholders in Georgetown, including the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), the judiciary, civil society bodies and the various political parties contesting the upcoming elections.
On Friday last, Chief Observer Robert Biedroń, who launched the mission during a press conference in Georgetown, had called for the transparent and timely tabulation and declaration of results at the September 1 elections.
“We envisage full transparency and accountability from all electoral stakeholders. This will enhance public trust in the process. We also encourage a transparent and timely tabulation and announcement of results,” Biedroń had posited.
The mission head had also assured that their presence will not interfere in Guyana’s electoral process at any stage. “We are here to observe whether the electoral process is conducted in a transparent and credible manner,” he declared.
The EU EOM mission was deployed at the invitation of the Guyana Government. It is expected to present its preliminary findings in a public statement two days after the election, followed by a final report, including recommendations for improving the electoral process, which will be published after the completion of the entire process.
This is the second full-scale Election Observation Mission deployed by the EU for local elections.

2020 polls
At the March 2, 2020 polls, the EU had fielded the largest mission – a 55-member team. That mission played a key role in ensuring that Guyana’s democracy prevailed following blatant attempts to rig those elections.
At the time, Guyana was plunged into a political deadlock for five months as a result of blatant attempts to steal the elections by some senior electoral officials with the aim of keeping the then A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) coalition regime in power.
In its final report, the 2020 EU Mission had found that while the voting and counting were well managed all over the country, along with the tabulation of results in nine of Guyana’s 10 regions, the tabulation process was abruptly stalled in Region Four – the country’s largest and most decisive voting district.
The EU EOM had said, “…the integrity of the entire electoral process was seriously compromised by the non-transparent and non-credible tabulation of results in the largest and decisive Region Four by senior GECOM officials acting in blatant violation of the law and High Court orders issued in this regard.”
At the centre of those allegations are former Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield and then Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, who allegedly blatantly inflated figures in favour of the APNU+AFC. Both Lowenfield and Mingo, along with other GECOM staff and senior APNU+AFC members, have since been slapped with a slew of electoral fraud charges that are still pending before the local courts.