OAS flays GECOM over failure to implement elections recommendations

…says delayed results court mistrust, provide fertile ground for conspiracy theories

Head of the Organisation of American States (OAS) Elections Observer Mission, former Jamaican Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Bruce Golding has lamented the fact that many of the recommendations coming out from that body over the years continue to go unimplemented.

Golding gave the damning report when he took a break from the election observer process while at the South Ruimveldt Secondary School, to engage with media operatives and to give an initial assessment.
He told media operatives that “regrettably” only two of the recommendations coming out of the OAS’s previous two missions for the 2015 and 2011 elections were partially implemented.
According to Golding, “a lot of the recommendations made by [the] mission in 2015 and even in 2011 those are still languishing.”
He suggested, “…we may very well find ourselves in [the] position where this mission is going to have to restate those recommendations because they are still valid.”

Courting mistrust
In another swipe at the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Golding told media operatives that the mission had urged the entity to seek to ensure that the results of Monday’s poll are communicated in a timely manner.
He told media operatives that this was a matter that was raised with the Commission which was experienced in Guyana in previous years – the time that it takes for the results to be announced.
According to the OAS Mission Head, “it is not good to have an election on Monday and several days can pass before the people of Guyana can know what the outcome of those elections are….that is courting mistrust, it is providing fertile ground for rumours and conspiracy theories.”
Golding sought to point out that it must be borne in mind that given the geography of Guyana, there are remote polling locations where it would prove to be challenging to have the results conveyed at times by boat or plane.
“Time will have to be allowed for that to be done and care will have to be taken to ensure that in that process, whether they are being flown or being conveyed by boat that the ballot boxes and the Statement of Polls are carefully protected and the integrity is preserved.”
He was adamant, however, that results from the elections can be communicated as they are tabulated and that the Commission does not have to wait until the final box of ballots has been counted before releasing any reports.
Golding posited that even with the situation of results having to be conveyed by boat and aeroplanes, “we feel that you don’t have to wait until the last box or last Statement of Poll has come in, results can be sent to the people as they come.”
This, he said, could serve to reassure the electorate that the process is in fact working and that the results are not being deliberately delayed to facilitate anything that would be inimical to the free expression of the will of the people. ”
The Head of the OAS Mission expressed a level of optimism when it comes to GECOM and its ability to mitigate the risk of a fraudulent election process.
“The system is very robust, the system as it is designed with the checks and balances that are there is very robust.”
He cautioned, however, “no matter how robust a system is it can be overturned if the conditions allow it.”
Golding used as an example a hypothetical situation of persons overrunning a Polling Station and said: “if that happens all of those robust systems are at risk, that’s part of the reality of democracy.”

No poll book, time consuming
Speaking to other concerns, Golding observed that at least one Polling Station began the day without a poll book and that the Presiding Officer had to resort to innovative ways of recording occurrences with the intent of having these transcribed to official stationery at a later time.
He said it was observed too that at some Polling Stations, the process of identifying the voters and issuing the ballot paper was more time consuming than others and posited that this may have to do with the level of experience of the persons who were working at the Polling Station.
Golding suggested that this occurrence could very well form part of the team’s recommendations with a view of having the process expedited within the ambit of what is catered for in the law.
The former Jamaican Prime Minister reported that generally speaking, “things have gone well.”
He told media operatives that at none of the Polling Stations “we visited did we encounter any disruption, people were very peaceful, they were very orderly, I did not detect any tension among the persons waiting to vote even though I am sure they represented different parties.”
According to Golding, queued voters “all seem to have been prepared to wait and prepared to exercise their franchise in a dignified manner.”
This, he called a credit to all Guyanese people since “they have a great deal of investment in this process and in this elections.”
He expressed the hope that the same level of civility, tolerance and consciousness will govern the process of tabulating the votes after polls have closed.