Dear Editor,
As if the global pandemic COVID-19 is not enough to do battle with, Guyanese have to fight tooth and nail to get the Guyana Elections Commission to declare the results of an election held 77 days ago which in itself is a major failure of the Chairperson and her Commissioners. It is extremely disgraceful when one considers just over 450k people voted. Now having dilly and dallied for close to a month, they set a timeframe of 25 days to recount the ballots. With ten counting stations, they counted 643 boxes at the end of 13 days, averaging, say 50 boxes daily or 5 boxes per station. This means in the other 12 remaining days of their target date, they have to count 1696 boxes, or, say, 141 boxes daily. What does GECOM, a constitutional body that failed the people to deliver the elections result after 77 days now do? Add a princely two more stations which at the current rate will now average 60 boxes daily and if they don’t further increase the counting stations or the duration of the workday, they will take another 28 days to finish the recount, making a total time of 41 days when their estimate was 25 days. GECOM can and must stick to their timeline of 25 days!
Many people in this country cannot provide food for their family as they are out of jobs, businesses are closed, people are fed up, frustrated, downright demotivated and depressed. Yet GECOM is limping along without any urgency! They are woefully behind schedule and what do they do? Close the stations at 5 pm and 05:30 pm? What is wrong with the Chairperson and the Commission? Don’t these people have any sense of responsibility to this country? It is simply ludicrous that instead of increasing the hours, they are reducing it.
GECOM must do better! The country cannot afford to wait another 28 days with just 2 more stations added. They must add another 4 more stations to take it to 16 stations. Even with 16 stations with an average of 80 boxes daily will take us 21 more days from May 19. And pray, can someone explain why they did not allocate the 2 more stations to Region Four? At the end of day 13, Region Four still had 714 out of 879 boxes or approximately 81 per cent to be counted. We will end up exactly where we started. All the regions would be completed and Region Four would remain and this is where the elections fiasco started. Seems the Chairperson and the Commission have not learned anything or are going where they want to be. It is extremely difficult to figure out the happenings at GECOM.
The Central Corentyne Chamber of Commerce is urgently calling the Chairperson, Justice Claudette Singh, and the Commission to put an additional 4 more stations and also increase the hours up to 09:00 pm. At least these two measures would take us not too far away from the original 25 days for the recount.
Yours truly,
M Raffik
President – Central
Corentyne Chamber of
Commerce
