Caricom Chair and Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley will lead a delegation of regional Prime Ministers on a special two-day mission to Guyana today. Mottley, who was bestowed with Guyana’s highest national award, will be joined by Prime Ministers Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica, Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines and Keith Mitchell of Grenada.
Caricom Chair and Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley
Mottley’s trip to Guyana was announced during a national address at the Hilton Barbados where the Social Partnership met to discuss COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the Caricom Secretariat in a statement said that in an effort to ease tension in the country and assist in arriving at a resolution of the impasse that resulted from last Monday’s General and Regional Elections, the delegation will meet with the leadership of all parties that contested the poll.
Additionally, the Caricom heads will meet with representatives of the Commonwealth, Organisation of American States, European Union and Carter Center observer missions that were in the country to monitor the conduct of the elections.
On Saturday, Mottley in a statement on the situation in Guyana insisted that the verification process of Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) tabulation must be completed in the presence of all political parties as well as the various electoral observers.
Grenada PM Keith Mitchell
She reiterated appeals for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to complete the electoral process, which was abandoned by the Region Four Returning Officer, who went ahead to illegally declare the results of the region on Thursday last without completing the verification process.
“The Caribbean Community calls on the electoral officials in Guyana and the representative political parties to work together to achieve a peaceful and lawful completion of the electoral process in Guyana by ensuring the tabulation of the results in all regions using the Statements of Poll in a transparent manner in the presence of the representatives of the political parties and the electoral observers,” the Caricom Chair said on Saturday.
St Vincent and the Grenadines PM Ralph Gonsalves
She went on to say that Caricom, as well as the independent Elections Observer Missions (EOMs) that were deployed to monitor the March 2 General and Regional Elections in Guyana, was very clear in its position that every vote must be made to count and transparently so.
Dominican PM Roosevelt Skerrit
PM Mottley said she is simply asking parties to recognise that the primary consideration must not only be who will be President but, more so, who will be alive come next week or next month, for there cannot be a tolerance for any further loss of life.
