Appearing on the Kaieteur Radio on Tuesday evening, Public Relations Officer (PRO), Yolanda Ward of The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), said that GECOM is working to ensure the delivery of results for the March 2 elections are done in the shortest possible time.
“Understanding the anxiety in persons, it is important for us to deliver results in the shortest possible time.”
Ward noted that the Laws of Guyana makes provision for the declaration of results some 15 days after the close of polls. However, the election body, barring its challenges works to declare the results soonest.
“We have built on lessons learnt and we have been working out our own operations and administrative subsets, to ensure that we can deliver elections results in the shortest possible time,” she said in the interview.
Although GECOM is working towards delivering early results accuracy will not be sacrificed, it is the provision of accurate and credible results that is most central.
“And not just delivering the results, it is the delivery of accurate and credible results within the shortest possible time.”
Addressing the challenges responsible for the usual delay, the PRO pointed out Guyana’s geographical layout and the remoteness of many of the participating communities.
“Some riverain communities are only accessible by plane while others are by boat. Therefore moving Statements of Polls (SOP’s) from those locations to the city to affect the full tabulation can pose some challenges,” she explained.
Added to that, she noted that Guyana’s laws currently provides only for manual voting.
Further, the PRO explained that the Returning Officers for each administrative region will have to declare the results of the Regional Elections before the General results are announced.
“It is something I hope the electorate can really understand; the challenges we have in terms of the geography and the logistics and what it entails to ensure we have the timely declaration of the results. But we are working through all the systems to ensure that we can have the results within the shortest possible time,” she reiterated.
Meanwhile, the Official List of Electors (OLE) has been made available to the public. GECOM also reported that some 13,000 persons have been trained to function at the more than 2,300 polling stations across Guyana on elections day.
