EU Observer Mission urges transparent, timely tabulation & declaration of election results

– to field 50-member EOM for Sept 1 polls

The European Union Election Observation Mission to Guyana (EU EOM) is calling for the transparent and timely tabulation and declaration of results at the upcoming September 1 General and Regional Elections.
While the mission’s core team of eight experts has already arrived in Guyana, the EU EOM will be deploying a full-scale 50-member Election Observation Mission to all 10 regions across the country for next month’s polls.

Chief Observer of the EU EOM is Robert Biedroń, a Member of the European Parliament from Poland. He is part of the eight-member core team of experts currently in Georgetown and has commenced engaging key electoral stakeholders.
Addressing members of the media at official launch of the 2025 EU EOM, Biedroń said the team will observe and analyse all aspects of the electoral process.
“The presence of the European Union Election Observation Mission demonstrates our commitment to inclusive, transparent, and credible elections in Guyana. We do not only focus on election day but on the entire electoral process, including the pre-election environment, the campaign, the tabulation of results, and the resolution of any election-related complaints… 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,” he posited.

According to Biedroń, the EU EOM sees the upcoming elections as an opportunity for all stakeholders to demonstrate Guyana’s commitment to democracy, ensuring that all eligible voters and candidates fully exercise their democratic rights; all contesting political parties are free to campaign on a level playing field with equal access to media and public spaces; and importantly, voters are able to cast their votes in secret – free from any pressure, intimidation, or any other form of interference.
To ensure that this is done, the mission’s Core Team arrived in Georgetown on July 23, comprising eight experts who will conduct electoral, legal, political, media, and social media analysis.

On August 6, the EU EOM will deploy a group of 14 long-term observers across all 10 regions to monitor the electoral preparations, campaigning, and the broader political environment in those areas. Then, just before September 1, another 20 short-time observers join the team here to observe voting and the tabulation of results.
“Altogether, we’ll expect to have around 50 observers on the ground – all of them…represent a well-oiled machine of high-quality experts,” the mission chief stated.
Biedroń went on to assure that his team would not interfere in any of the local electoral processes. He stressed, “They do not, and I want to underline this, interfere in the electoral process at any stage. We are here to observe whether the electoral process is conducted in a transparent and credible manner.”

Meetings
Meanwhile, since their arrival in Georgetown, Biedroń and his core team have engaged a broad range of stakeholders on Thursday, including officials of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), discussing the entity’s preparedness and other issues of electoral importance for next month’s polls.
The EU EOM also met with Chief Justice (ag) Roxane George on the role of the judiciary in the electoral process as well as representatives from three political parties – the People’s Progressive Party/Civic, A Partnership for National Unity, and the Alliance For Change.
These engagements continued on Friday with the mission meeting Forward Guyana Movement’s Amanza Walton-Desir and her team. They also met with members of the National Toshaos Council (NTC), discussing the role of the indigenous peoples in Guyana’s election process. During Friday’s press conference, the Chief Observer told the Guyana Times that they intend to engage all six political parties contesting the elections, along with other key stakeholders, over the coming days and weeks.
Two days after the upcoming election day, the EU EOM will release a preliminary report on September 3 of its initial findings, with the final comprehensive report expected in the next two to three months, provided that the electoral process is completed.
This is the second full-scale Election Observation Mission deployed by the EU for local elections.

EU and the March 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.