Members of the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) remain in the dark about the official outcome of the recently held elections. This comes against the backdrop of incumbent President Patrick Yarde’s May Day message where he asserted that he would be victorious.
Incumbent President Patrick Yarde during his swearing in as PSC Chairman
It has been close to a week since the elections were completed and votes were reportedly tallied. When contacted on Friday, however, presidential candidate in the election, Gregory Gaspar, stated he also remains in the dark.
According to Gaspar, the GPSU hierarchy has so far failed to communicate with him and fellow members the official winner of the elections. On Tuesday, the GPSU had released what it referred to as the results of its general election for office bearers.
It showed Yarde as having received 1024 votes, while Gaspar, who was named twice, received a total of 1318. The document was signed by Elections Officer Herman DeSouza.
However, the release took members of the Union by surprise and a faction calling itself “Team Change” called a press conference on Tuesday evening last at the Demerara Cricket Ground. Once there, they had called for members to reject any continuation of Yarde’s role as President of GPSU.
It was only on May 4 that Yarde was sworn in as acting Chairman of the Public Service Commission. He took the oath before President David Granger at the Ministry of the Presidency.
In April, a High Court injunction was granted preventing the holding of elections until an audit of GPSU’s accounts was done dating back over 10 years. Yarde has been at the helm of GPSU for a staggering 30 years. The discharge of the injunction allowed for the elections to be held.
But the GPSU election itself was filled with drama. Police had to be called in on April 29 over the standoff stemming from the refusal of election officials to provide the voters list to supporters of Gaspar and other members.
In a strongly worded letter addressed to Elections Officer Herman DeSouza, Gaspar had complained that the list was requested on April 23, 26, 27, 28 and 29, but was never provided. In the letter, he also complained about ballot boxes being delivered without the elections or Assistant Elections Officers present.
The letter also raised the issue of no statement of polls for outlying regions such as Regions Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam); Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara); Five (Mahaica-Berbice); Six (East Berbice-Corentyne); Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni) and 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) being made available to members.
Gaspar had also expressed concern about the condition in which some of the boxes arrived. In his letter, Gaspar referenced a Region Three ballot box which he stated was allegedly tampered with. He said that allegations that votes from non-eligible voters were placed in the box should be reviewed before finalising the elections.
He stated that in one case, four ballot boxes from Linden, Region 10 arrived with three seals broken. Gaspar related that he approached the Elections Officer earlier, but was told that they were given three seals for each box.
